Just wonderin', as have several people who've emailed me about this cover. There were a stack of these in my office this AM. There's a suggestion that I should now work for free instead. I prefer the infinite price idea to justify my constant complaint of being underpaid and overworked.

Thanks to our local communications staff who put that together; I wasn't as enthused about the cover as others, but it seems to have gone over well. I am deeply grateful to this university that has given me plenty of opportunities to be successful and in my corner when I am. When I do write critically of the school on this blog, I hope readers understand it's the disappointment one feels when a loved one doesn't meet the ideal vision one has of it. It has long been populated with wonderful people, most of whom are friendly even when in deep disagreement. One can hardly ask for more.

Labels: economics, SCSU

Morning meetings with advisees, afternoon class, and evening for Husky Night at the Dome. No time to write, so let me send you in two directions:

1. Mike Munger is experiencing what our tax regime might look like in a few years;
2. Russ Roberts sees the Obamas' date night as a Keynesian might.

Labels: economics, SCSU

The University of North Dakota has announced that, unless the two Sioux tribes of the state agree before October 1 to the use of their tribal name for a period of at least thirty years, the university will end its use of the Fighting Sioux mascot.

Today, Thursday, May 14, the North Dakota State Board of Higher Education passed the following unanimous motion:

"Consistent with the terms and conditions of the October 26, 2007 Settlement Agreement entered into with the NCAA, the Board directs UND officials to retire the 'Sioux' nickname and logo, effective October 1, 2009. Full retirement of the nickname and logo shall be completed no later than August 1, 2010. In the event a new nickname and logo is adopted by UND, they shall not violate the NCAA policy regarding Native American nicknames, mascots and imagery.

UND is further directed to undertake actions consistent with the Settlement Agreement to protect its intellectual property rights in the 'Fighting Sioux' nickname and mark. UND is further directed to address the imagery at Ralph Engelstad Arena and other venues pursuant to the terms, conditions and timelines set forth in the Settlement Agreement. ...

UND President Robert Kelley seems resigned to the fate of the nickname. On Say Anything, the timing of this event is questioned, since one band of Sioux had already agreed to the nickname. The other one has a tribal council blocking a referendum on the issue. "The Whistler" at Say Anything wonders:

According to the timeline set up by the Board of Higher Education the committee was supposed to work on this issue for the rest of the year. When the Attorney General negotiated the terrible settlement with the NCAA he said that he and the governor would meet with the tribes to settle this matter. Of course they never did. Specifically John Hoeven isn’t going to address a controversial subject if he can possibly duck it.

This committee headed by Grant Shaft was formed last year and met one time. According to their schedule they were to meet four times.

They only met once. Grant Shaft says that the Summit league membership was on the line. The Summit league said that wasn’t the case. So why did they have to decide now.

The settlement with the NCAA was set up so that the Fighting Sioux name would just go away without the local self-appointed elites being blamed.

But then something happened. A local group on the Spirit Lake Tribe decided they didn’t agree with the elites. They like the name. They brought it to a vote on the reservation and it passed overwhelmingly.

That left getting a vote of the members of the other Sioux Tribe in the state.

That’s why there was a hurry. The Board of Higher Education was afraid that members of the Standing Rock Tribe would force a vote and approve of the nickname. And then where would those self-appointed elites be?

On the SCSU campus a promotional weekly of "SCSU in the News" announced this as a victory ... for SCSU:

For 16 years a number of St. Cloud State students, faculty, staff and administrators pushed the University of North Dakota to cease using its “Sioux” nickname and logo, arguing they are racially hostile and abusive. The end game in that long battle may be near. On May 14, the North Dakota State Board of Higher Education ordered UND to retire the 'Sioux' nickname and logo, effective Oct. 1, 2009. ...

St. Cloud State involvement in the controversy includes a campus ban on using the logo and nickname in university-produced publications, an NCAA resolution, protests at athletic contests involving UND teams and classroom curricula. Among our leaders on this issue were former presidents Robert O. Bess and Roy Saigo, Athletics Director Morris Kurtz and Sudie Hofmann, professor of human relations and multicultural education.

Let's summarize, then: A group of elitists at the NCAA, at one time headed by President Saigo, lobbies to force a competing athletic program to abandon a long-used mascot. The mascot uses the name of a Native American tribe, one band of which approves of the mascot, the other of which is blocked from voting in a referendum on the mascot. The elitists then take the blocked vote as a sign that they have done the right thing and compel a university to end its long tradition. President of that university is left to make apologies and ask for kindness from those whose wishes were trumped by the elites. (I have no idea of Pres. Kelley agrees with the Board's decision; at any rate he's made the best of a raw deal.)

Labels: mascots, North Dakota, SCSU

The campus is abuzz over yet another piece of ugly graffiti.

A class studying civil rights activist Dorothy Irene Height’s life and legacy stood up to the person who perpetrated the most recent act of cowardly graffiti on the St. Cloud State University campus.

Several students in a class called Race in America, without prompting from university administrators, banded together to immediately and publicly denounce a racist message posted on a bulletin board honoring Height’s accomplishments. They left the racist vandal some graffiti of their own.

“Not true. Not funny. Not OK in my community,” read one.

“Racism is ignorance,” read another.

“Man up,” another read. “Do you talk to your mother with that mouth?”

The student-driven outcry spread through text messages, e-mails, Twitter and Facebook early this week and continued Wednesday. By Wednesday evening, students had left more than 100 notes for the unknown racist.

This is the very same bulletin board we discussed last year; I know the professor and the class, and saw the board before the graffiti and the response. The display had once again the amateur drawings, but in this case laying out the life of a woman whose story wasn't very well known, and perhaps did need to be more known. Unlike last year's, this display had the quality of telling a biography in an informative way. (I'll suggest someone from that class should spiff up her Wiki page; they seem to have learned enough to improve on this.)

There's no doubt that the person who chose to scrawl graffiti on that display deserves condemnation. One hopes that the student would receive instruction on why that's not the way to engage those with whom you disagree.

But really, "the unknown racist"? Isn't this a bit extreme? I saw a couple of groups, lead by faculty, walking past the display. (UPDATE: Stepped out for a few minutes and found the professor with some of her class, filming statements around the display: They've announced they will be put up on Facebook and Twitter.) The notes pasted up are by and large of the "that ain't cool, man" variety, but a few would suggest something more angry. One of the short stories I read in an English class (I think in high school) was The Lottery. Does anyone assign this any more? Do students have an appreciation of how groupthink can lead sometimes to mob violence? The question is, does one graffito make a racist, known or unknown?

It intrigued me that in this story -- unlike any stories ever written about crime, for instance -- the race of each student quoted in the story is identified. Sure, I understand the reason being to show solidarity, unity in opposing racism. But have we now reached a point where journalistic standards will include a style sheet saying when it's OK to recognize race and when it's not OK?

A few days ago James Taranto commented on a similar story, an AP report that despite the existence of President Obama not all jokes about race have stopped whizzing over the internet. He traces out the history of the United States and notes:

How far does America still have to go to bridge its centuries-old racial divide? Liz Sidoti answers the question:

Even in 2009, a black man cannot become president of the United States without some knuckleheads sending stupid emails about him.

To be sure, America has made some racial progress. But the dream of equality will not be truly and fully realized until President Obama's political detractors treat him with the same respect George W. Bush's detractors showed him.

Like all colleges, our university has many young people, learning about what it means to be an educated person, engaging in self-expression. We have classes that teach about race mandated for every student, but reacting with this mass expression to any dissent to it. Our university's goal may be to reduce racism in one place, but a policy of zero expresssions of racial slurs is a chimera. We are human beings, fallen from Eden. Most of us resist sin some of the time; none of us resist all sin all the time. How should a university treat one of its students -- if indeed that's who it is -- who falls, who fails?

SCSU may think it is overcoming racism with its hallway displays. But if we're ever going to really overcome racism, it will be when we stop looking for the guy who drew the graffito with stones in our hands or fury in our pens and markers, and can instead embrace him or her with the same love and discipline (law and gospel, if you will) that we show any other wayward child, and it stops being a news story.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

The talk I gave to Winter Institute's Economic Outlook last Thursday night is now available. My portion begins right at the 30:00 point, lasts 30 minutes. and mostly focuses on the St. Cloud economy. The Q&A appears to have been recorded. Before I started talk radio, I could not have done that talk sitting down. Now it's easier, but I still prefer to walk and talk.

If you have itnerest in China, you can find the Friday presentations by our delegates from Nankai University Binhai College, Nicholas Lardy and Wing Thye Woo as well as the lunch talk by my friend Jack Hou from this page.

Labels: economics, SCSU

I'm sitting at this moment watching the second of two presentations on China-America relations.  The Economic Outlook last night was great fun; while none of our out-of-town speakers were there, we had over 250 in the audience.  While many of my former students were stuck in the Twin Cities, some closer alums made it; we also have a large number of economics students from UM-Duluth here for the conference.  My presentation from last night is here, as promised to you yesterday.

The view from this conference is that China is needed to help the US and world economy come out of recession (I've mentioned this fellow's comment from a couple weeks ago) but Wing Thye Woo (whose speech is going on while I type this) is concerned that a trade war is about to break out that will cause disruption of both goods and credit flows.  The EU is already threatening China.  

Reading tonight:  10 Reasons Why China Matters to You

Labels: economics, SCSU

Our storm today has led to cancellations of some guests for the Economic Outlook tonight, at 5pm at the Kelly Inn. Drs. Laufenberg, Hine and Stinson are unable to get here. My co-author Rich MacDonald will be joining me, however, and we'll put on the Outlook with an all-local panel. Audience participation is appreciated, so if you're in the area in the next 90 minutes, please stop in!

If there's a podcast, I'll let you know. My slides will be posted on this page later tonight, though as we've been adjusting the program during the day my slides have changed dramatically and I'm not sure what version I converted to pdf any more. Oy!

Labels: economics, SCSU

Meetings all day, and preparing for Winter Institute. Which reminds me, if you haven't thought about coming yet, please consider it. That's me on the program for Thursday night's Economic Outlook, with national forecaster Dan Laufenberg, state economist Tom Stinson, and Minnesota labor market expert Steve Hine. I'll be speaking on the central Minnesota economy.

On Friday, the Winter Institute is on Sino-American relations, with the highlight (at least for me) Wing Thye Woo from UC-Davis. I met Woo in Claremont many years ago when he was writing with Jeff Sachs on Chinese economic development, and his work is quite impressive. Also, my friend Jack Hou is giving the luncheon talk. (I'm going to lecture him on not having a professional webpage.)

More tonight if I get a break from making slides for Thursday!

Labels: economics, SCSU

Following up on my post about the Gaza victims Qassam-launchers-shielded-by-children panel, I had noted the impassioned response of the director of religious and Jewish studies, who had tried to attend the panel and ask a question about the poster. He got loud after his question was ignored by the panelists, and was asked to leave by campus security. His response was to hold his own panel. Unapologetic, he explained,

"I asked those leading the panel to please help me understand what these pictures had to do with this event," Edelheit said. "If there was a direct answer to my question I would have left - it would have taken less than three minutes."

...Questions were raised as to why Edelheit has not organized or spoken on the same panel with Slisli and Tademe last Wednesday. Edelheit responded by saying he was refused and opportunity to be on the panel, but it has not been the first time Slisli and Tademe have denied him.

"I made a decision last Wednesday because these two professors have, for five years, ignored me and repudiated my presence on this campus," Edelheit said.

Having two separate presentations about the same topic negates the potential usefulness of a public forum, according to Edelheit.

"Separate discussions are fruitless," Edelheit said.

And there, in a nutshell, is the problem of university campuses. What is desired, a sharing of views, is not really the interest of the Left on campus. The last thing they want is intellectual diversity. They want separatism. Their students should be shielded from conservative thought, from anything that might interfere with the campus Left's fawning over Hamas. I'd like to thank Professor Edelheit for pointing out the real apartheid on our campuses, rather than this faux one the Left is inventing. (And it's not new, as this article from 1990 shows.)

Labels: higher education, SCSU

I love the grandiose title:
SAVE EARTH! Glorioski, how'd they do it?! Here's the story:

The Garvey Commons experimented with trayless food service earlier this year and then asked students about making the change permanent. Garvey will be largely trayless for the rest of the year and all of next year, and another evaluation will be done to see if the change will continue.

Going trayless saves 650-740 pounds of food waste a day, 400-500 gallons of water a day and allows Garvey to use about 10 percent less soap, rinsing solution and other chemicals. It also forces students to make better choices of how much food they eat; they won’t add food to a tray just because they have the room.

I envision a whole new diet plan, to be heard soon on Oprah: Throw away the dinner plates. Have your family eat off small plates and they'll eat less.

Let me explain: Sodexho, our food service operator, is going to "save 650-740 pounds of food waste a day". Cui bono? Why, Sodexho! It serves less food and saves on detergent. Is any of the savings to be shared with students? No, because they are SAVING EARTH!

According to the survey (done after the trial), 66 percent of students said the benefits to the environment outweighed any inconvenience of going without trays. And 69 percent said the benefits of possibly saving money on their meal plan outweighed any inconvenience of going without trays.

Don't hold your breath on getting that cash, Sarah Student. And the newspaper blithely joins in, on page one, with that headline, helping to perpetrate the fraud. Students accept inconvenience in return for feeling good, and nobody is going to correct their errors.

UPDATE: It's a fad in many places.

Labels: economics, SCSU

Click to enlarge. This was distributed this morning as an announcement to our campus. Your suggestions for how to respond are invited in comments. I support campus free speech. I also think the comparison drawn is outrageous and disgusting. Beyond saying so, what does one say or do?

Labels: fill-in-the-blank studies, free speech, higher education, SCSU, totalitarianism

Mrs. S writes today about the use of tax dollars to support a state university enterprise of operating housing off-campus. I've talked to a couple of local developers/landlords, and they are skeptical of government involvement in the student rental market. If we need more student housing, the university could build a new dorm (been many years since the last one was built.) Can university housing help redevelop a public street that has, to put it mildly, gotten a bit long in the tooth?

Labels: housing, SCSU

I was reading on Bill Easterly's new blog about Refugee Run. It reminds me of a long-ago time here at SCSU when various multicultural student groups would take a day to turn the student union building into apartheid South Africa. White students would be asked to show their passes (student ID) and perhaps questioned. I believe one year they tried to separate where the white students could eat lunch. There was then to be discussion groups to take advantage of this consciousness-raising exercise. I had always wondered what the students of color who acted as the guards that day; did they learn Acton's Law, for example?

Refugee Run is basically that, except replace white students with Davos attendees.

But that wasn't the most important thing I got. Easterly writes:

Alex de Waal in his equally great book Famine Crimes (and continuing writings since) writes about “disaster pornography.” He gives an example of a Western television producer in Somalia in 1992-93 who said to a local Somali doctor: “pick the children who are most severely malnourished” and bring them to be photographed.

"Disaster pornography", as Sam Kinison famously lampooned, continues to this day. At the Super Bowl party I attended Sunday someone wondered where Sally Struthers is. (It was a guy, so I let his ignorance of Gilmore Girls pass unremarked. Until now.) We all take advantage of it -- there are conservative talk show hosts that use the image of starving Haitians to raise money to send money as well as the more liberal Sachs-Stiglitz types who think the U.S. aid budget is too stingy.

Disaster pornography is what killed the Bush presidency in New Orleans. What will be the DP image that weighs down the Obama popularity rating? You may think the MSM would never do such a thing, but what bleeds, leads, and the Obama presidency will be dull soon.

In the time since his inauguration, Mr. Obama has been on every screen in the country, TV and computer, every day. He is never not on the screen. I know what his people are thinking: Put his image on the age. Imprint the era with his face. But it's already reaching saturation point. When the office is omnipresent, it is demystified. Constant exposure deflates the presidency, subtly robbing it of power and making it more common.

Before long, some cameraman will be looking for the doctor in some faraway place to hold up the sickliest child to the lens.

Labels: economics, leftism, Obama, SCSU

Sorry to have gone silent on you yesterday, but I was prepping this talk as well as a lunchtime Kiwanis. Oh and the usual department meeting on Monday. We'll do a little better today.

Mrs. S says that's a good picture, but do I REALLY move my arms as much as that? That's why I do radio.

Labels: economics, SCSU, St. Cloud

At least one group is going to mark the Inauguration with a protest.

The mainstream media has extended its honeymoon with the new administration; even as scandals, bailouts, proposed federal works programs, a falling economy, and questionable cabinet appointments take place.

Many Americans say, "Give him a chance. He can fix our problems." But, why be fooled again?

Government is limited by the United States Constitution for a reason. Society is a responsibility of the people, not the government.

We already know the real Barack Obama. We know his cabinet appointments; we know his voting record; and we know his beliefs.

He promises more foreign intervention, more socialism, more restrictions on our civil liberties, and a greater disregard for the Constitution.

Rather than wait for another politician to disappoint the American people, let's stand up as patriots and say one day of Barack Obama is enough.

Our local campus has a YAL chapter; I agreed to serve as its adviser when they said they needed one in order to form. Here's their press release:

Tomorrow, Barack Obama’s Inauguration Day, students will participate in an activism event on college campuses nationwide declaring, “Change? What change?”

Thus far, 41 chapters of the group Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) have confirmed their participation. Each chapter will distribute flyers, hand out pocket constitutions, and talk to students about the dangers of Barack Obama’s policies on their campus.

The local YAL chapter at the University of St. Cloud will host their own event on campus at Atwood Memorial from 10:00am – 3:00 pm. Media is welcome to attend.

“This is no doubt a historic day, but Barack Obama does not offer real change. His policies only enforce bigger government, an increase to the already massive budget, the same foreign policy, and the continued destruction of our civil liberties,” says Sam Swedberg, President of the YAL chapter at the University of St. Cloud State .

YAL’s event, Real Change Requires R3volution, seeks to peel back the marketing of Barack Obama and expose his policies for what they really are – not real change. Before taking office, Barack Obama has put forth an $800 billion economic plan, promised more troops in Afghanistan, and begun talks of reviving the draft.

“Not all young people are excited about the policies of President Obama. Who do you think will pay for all of this reckless spending? Who will fight and die in these unnecessary wars oversees? Our generation will,” says Jeff Frazee, Executive Director of YAL, in Arlington, VA.

For more information about the event, please visit http://www.yaliberty.org/change and join us on campus at Atwood Memorial tomorrow, Tuesday, from 10:00am – 3:00pm.

That "R3volution" is of course a Ron Paul trademark. Please do not infer from my advising of the group that I am in agreement with the positions of Rep. Paul. I believe, however, that students who disagree with liberal orthodoxy on this campus need to organize, and am happy to let a hundred libertarian groups bloom.

I would point out to them (and will when I see them next) that no policies have yet been enacted; his fellow Democrats are already shredding big parts of Obama's stimulus plan, including the $3000 tax credit for new jobs. But a compromise between Obama and the Democrats is unlikely to produce less state control of the economy.

Labels: Obama, politics, SCSU

Let me give a more local view of the hagiography of Obama. Over the weekend a small debate on campus broke out over Inauguration Day events being offered by the multicultural student services office here on campus (and some viewing opportunities through the student programming board.) Classes were invited. Some people wondered why we are doing this.

Undoubtedly some of the fascination with Obama is race. How could anyone think not? So when we have groups on campus dedicated to advocacy for particular races (called "underrepresented" or "historically underserved" or some such), celebrations of an advance of those races is to be expected. Tuesday is a great day for many reasons -- it reminds us of the robustness of our democracy, for one thing, and for another it marks an important expansion of political participation that we could not have imagined fifty years ago. So I do not have any problem that student organizations organized on race -- of which we have all but one, as there's no white student organization; just as Indoctrinate U pointed out, we have no male analog to a Women's Center -- celebrate the accomplishments of that race.

Is this hagiography evidence of left bias in the university? I don't know. When you have Obama visiting the Post and they snap cellphone pictures like ten-year-old girls at a Jonas Brothers concert, it's hard to blame a university for setting up a few big-screen TVs to watch an inauguration. It just reflects the mood of the times.

Nor would I complain greatly of having students taken from a classroom to watch the Inauguration, provided that the course is one for which presidential inaugurations or race relations was germane to the topic. I would ask, if a chemistry professor took her class to this event, what the Inauguration has to do with chemistry. I teach economics of developing countries tomorrow, 12:30-1:45. I will not take my class to it; we will have our normal lecture. That's my contract with them and what the state pays me to do. If students want to cut class and watch the Inauguration it is their right to do so. As with any other class, I do not incentivize absenteeism by sending out notes ex post or answer emails of "what did we do in class today?" Nor will I tomorrow. But that's my decision, based on what I see my contractual and ethical duties to be to my employer and to my students.

So while some, including some campus readers of this blog, have questioned the events, I see no reason to complain about it. But two last observations that are less positive about the events on campus. First, I think it's fair for one to wonder how many classes will take advantage of this. It may be many. Faculty these days tend to think more about the object of study than the disciplines with which they study. They can justify taking the students to view the Inauguration by saying something like "I study current events". All of the fill-in-the-blank studies programs will have no problem providing some rationale. It is this lack of disciplinarity that, in my view, is cheapening college education. Lacking a discipline means lacking its ethical standards. That is stuff out of the toothpaste tube, alas, not likely to ever be put back in.

Second, in the course of defending the campus viewing opportunities, one professor wrote this:

I would hope the majority of those who did not vote for Barack Obama did not "not vote" for him because he is an African American. And of course, now he is President elect for all Americans, not just those of us who voted for him.

How unfortunate a paragraph. 56 million people voted for someone other than Obama, and each one of them now has to be judged by the anointed like this professor. Did a few vote for McCain because Obama was black? I suspect so. But did a majority of those who did not vote for John McCain not vote for him because McCain is white? Did a majority of those who work in multicultural student services "not vote" for McCain because of race? These questions are absurd, of course. So is the question implied in the quote.

If Obama is going to be a post-racial president, he needs to work on professors who cast aspersions on those who might have voted for McCain because they don't like trillion dollar stimulus bills, or who think a 72-year-old guy has more experience than a guy who writes a biography before he has one, or who thinks the guy with military experience might be better for national security than the guy without. Nobody should have to prove those reasons were not rationalizations for racial animus.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

There's a course on campus called "Sociology and The Global Politics of Food".  It's not taught in the political science program but in the sociology department.  That in and of itself isn't the interesting part.  Social sciences often try to blur the lines between disciplines -- economics departments are as imperial as any of them (public choice in politics, experimental economics in psychology, etc.)  Nor do I really concern myself with the politics or the sociology.  Here's what they did this year for class projects.

Outside the faculty office of the instructor (one of those offices festooned with leftist propaganda) was something that looks like a bookmark (a strip on thick paper.)  On one side were "resources" with names of a number of local areas that appear to be related to food (not all are obviously connected, but I'll assume they are.)  On the other side are "Action Steps".  This is the list:

• Visit websites of hunger-relief organizations to learn what they do and how you can best help them.
• Host a "virtual lunch".  Decide how much it would cost to host a lunch with friends and then donate that money to a food shelf or food bank.
• Host a money drive in your school, work or faith community and see if your company will match the funds.
• Donate 10% of your grocery expenditures to your local hunger relief organization.
• Donate a grocery gift card to your local food shelf so they are able to purchase the items they need the most.
• Donate a gas card to a program that delivers meals to people in the community.
• Encourage your book club to focus one of their book choices on the issues of hunger and poverty.  Take it one step further and have your book club members organize a money drive or volunteer at a hunger relief organization.

I like that list. These are good things and I hope people do them. Here's my question: Does this constitute something we do in a public university?  What is the purpose of higher education -- to organize a food drive?  To say "if you liked what you learned in my class, you will give more to charity"?  I cannot imagine teaching a course where, among the items I give students or make available to students -- perhaps this professor distributed this in class, perhaps not -- I cannot imagine giving a student an "action step".  

Robert George writes:

Of course, what goes on ... in far too many classrooms is radically different from the classical understanding of the goal of liberal arts education, which is not to liberate us to act on our desires, but precisely to liberate us from slavery to them. Personal authenticity, under the traditional account, consists in self-mastery—in placing reason in control of desire.  

How can it be liberating to enter into the great conversation with Plato and his interlocutors? According to the classic liberal-arts ideal, doing so enables us to grasp more fully the humanizing truths by which we can direct our desires and our wills to what is truly good, beautiful, worthy of human beings as possessed of profound and inherent dignity. The liberal-arts ideal is rooted in the conviction that there are human goods, and a common good, in light of which we have reasons to limit and even alter our desires, thus becoming masters of ourselves.

Now if you accept this ideal, you are seeking answers to the question: What qualities make for an upright life?

This appears to support telling people to donate to food shelves, but the purpose of education is to give students the opportunity to "place reason ahead of desire" by their own lights.  Telling them what "action steps" they can take is not something that belongs in a university where we are developing reason and intellect of young adults attempting to transform themselves.   Telling them what to do is something we do in kindergarten.  By the time they're 21, we hope they don't need someone to give them action steps.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Three colleagues and I created a forum for discussion of the financial crisis. Campus radio station KVSC recorded the event and has podcast it. I doubled as moderator. The slides I used are here. (A couple are adopted from other things found on the web, so you might have seen them before.) My thanks to the other participants and to KVSC for the recording.

There was another forum at the University of Minnesota. Bigger names, perhaps, but I'm pretty sure I said something quite close to V.V. Chari:

Chari also complained that the administration’s crisis planning and strategy was largely done in secret, at a time when transparency was what the financial markets needed.

”This is the most opaque crisis recovery plan in history,” he said. “They may know things that we don’t, and those things may justify their fear. If that’s the case, please tell us.”

Yes.

Labels: banking, economics, SCSU

In this continuing series we have seen that the belief that affirmative action is wrong is ignorant speech to be controlled, because it's a goal, an ideal, so you should shut up rather than express dissent and, besides, affirmative action even helps white people, as long as they enlist in the army.  Today's edition continues to ponder what do students think about how they get jobs.

It might have been fun to have actually gotten an answer to that from the classroom or club that this was drawn in. I suspect you would have heard a great deal of anxiety over a number of things, from the interview process to the decision and how it is made. That anxiety is common to all people.But what do students think represents "the best person for the job"? Who gets to decide?  How many dimensions of the job can be used to decide who is best? The Civil Rights Act is an exception to the concept of at-will employment, which recognizes the right to private contract between employee and employer.  I hope that shows up at some point in this student's education.   Who's to say you're not qualified? How about the person who will pay you to work for her? Does she have a say in this?

We all get our income by persuading someone else to give it to us.  (Except for government; it gets its income at the end of a gun.)  We can persuade employers to hire people of color qua people of color because it increases the firm's sales or production of goods and services someone else sells.  When it does, the person of color would be favored regardless of whether there is a law in place.  If it does not increase sales of production, the law's compulsion of to hire the person of color acts as a tax on the firm's profits, and causes the employee who would have been hired instead to take the next-best job.  If you want to argue that's an OK price to pay, do so.  But you should not pretend that cost does not exist.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 for background)

There were two interesting sub-themes in the board that was presented to us in response to an anonymous poster who had the temerity to challenge a department's leftist orthodoxy. One was to focus on "goals-oriented affirmative action". It was an odd focus, and the only explanation that works for me is that this was a discussion point in a classroom. Of course, that's speculative.

But I'm also lead to believe this by two other posters that had this odd theme as well. Take for example, this one:

Consider that list: race, color [sic], national origin, sex, disabilities, veterans. Really? Are preferences for veterans -- that existed after almost any war -- a form of affirmative action? Apparently so recently, but using the affirmative action reporting mechanism to administer veterans' benefits is not the same thing as calling it affirmative action. We have long had in America a notion that part of the payment to veterans for their service, particularly in wartime, comes after their demobilization. Federal job preferences are a longstanding benefit. It appears recent law has directed private job benefits as well.

As the following pictures shows, though, it isn't just that for the students in this class or club:

I have wrestled with that poster. What this Marine is entitled to is our thanks, our support, and the full benefits of what they signed up for. A Marine gets a value in return for a value offered to his or her country, by his own actions and choices and preparation. I'd like to ask veterans reading this post: Do you consider the veterans benefits you receive a form of affirmative action? Some in academia say 'yes'.

UPDATE: A private correspondent writes:

I think that poster has equal opportunity employers confused with affirmative action employers. Equal opportunity employers promise not to discriminate. Affirmative action employers are the ones who promise to hire qualified minorities, women, etc over white men.

The Department of Labor provides information on affirmative action and for veterans. I read that to mean federal jobs or those with its contractors and subcontractors.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

I saw a note on campus for a film sponsored by a student group I had never heard of before.

AniMent Action on Campus - AAC

Welcome to AAC! We are here to work for equal rights of animals, and support environmental issues. We will be actively involved in the community on campus, in St. Cloud, and in the state of Minnesota.

Come join us for the betterment of our local community, and to raise awareness about AniMent issues!

I thought it was a group of students who drew anime art.  Instead it's a group that combines animal rights activism with environmentalism. They could have left out the "on Campus" part: Where else would you find such a thing?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

In which we find the quality of mercy is often strained.

(Part 1, Part 2 for background and to catch up.) 

In part 2 we had a few slides that showed a great deal about the subject matter of this class, but did not have any real animus towards the person who drew the counter-poster to which this class has reacted.  Alas, not all had that quality.

I've chosen to block out this student's name (I'll leave the illustration, so you know it's a female), but I found it touching after writing:

Get educated before you open your mouth and speak!  If you knew what affirmative action is you wouldn't be so stupid to put up a poster like that ... you are the cause of so many problems we have these days ... It's ignorant people like you that cause the races to divide ... GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT!

...that she chooses to leave a parenthetical

(and if you have any questions my name is yyyy yyyyyyy and we can chat...)

Do you always leave notes for people you want to "chat" with that have you underlining the words ignorant and stupid?  How's that working for your love life, Miss? "Biff, you're stupid and ignorant. Here's my cell, call me!"  I have to call that one my favorite.

This one is not quite as much fun. "Ignorant people talk without knowing what they're talking about." I believe that's called a tautology, yes? But the bubble quote is not tautological: "I use bigotry because I can't take responsibility for my actions." The poster is an imitation of the counter-poster, and on the kid's rejection slip it reads "not as qualified as you think."

Remember, this appears to be an organized response, on a board that a department has claimed as theirs.  This seems a good deal of hostility in this poster.  Is this something that academics should encourage?  I think, but do not know, if this is a classroom exercise.  If it was, how was it graded?  The line at the bottom reads "Why would any businessperson in their right mind lose money by hiring an unqualified person regardless of color?"  I don't know what that means exactly, but it sounds like a taunt.  

Today's liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that used to pride themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Yesterday's edition introduced us to the new board created by someone in the Community Studies department in the back stairwell of Stewart Hall here at SCSU.  I noted while walking around the building yesterday -- I work in a remote corner of the building, so I see lots of hallways and stairwells -- that that department has new bulletin boards up awaiting material.  As the song goes, I can't hardly wait.

The board in question provides responses to a counter-poster who had responded to a set of illustrations for an essay titled "Daily Effects of White Privilege."  It is written as "this is our response"; there are names on some of the responses that are also in the student directory, so I'm going to assume the students are a member of a class (perhaps a club instead, we should admit as a possibility.)  In either case a faculty member is with them as professor (or advisor.)  Let's look at a few more of these responses.

"simle" ... who has time for proofreading?

Here's the point: I put a job description on a website for new PhDs to be new assistant professors on campus. I get a bunch of applications. The first cut of the pool is between those who are qualified for the job and those that are not. I can rank in some way, perhaps, those that are more qualified than others. But at the end of every job application process I have a tradeoff in front of me -- one candidate has a set of skills making her better in one area than the other, the other has a different skill set making him better in the other. How do I weight that? If some non-job characteristic like sex or race is counted as a criterion in the hiring process, then the process of trading off means that characteristic compensates for a lesser skill in something else. You can't say at the same time "we value diversity" and "there are no qualification differences between the diversity-preferred and diversity-unfavored candidates" because the latter means diversity had no value. A line has no width.

Again, the question -- in what way are they less qualified when we "give diversity a chance"?  Are they less qualified because they can't put a 'Y' or a '1' in the diversity box on the application screening form?  And notice the confusion here -- nothing that the counter-poster wrote said anything about quotas.  Is the professor or advisor doing any teaching here?

Now this one is very interesting. It suggests that the firm makes more profits by hiring on the basis of "goal-oriented affirmative action." (That term could mean numerous things, but in Minnesota it has a particular definition under state law.) If it really improves profits, why would a firm ever need a program? But this would allow for customer discrimination: If it improves my profits as a car dealer to have a male sales staff, I will prefer to hire only males. Now it might improve your profits because the State of Minnesota won't do business with a company of more than 40 employees on a contract over $100,000 unless you have one of thse goal-oriented affirmative action plans. But that's not the profit motive -- that's a use of the confiscatory power of the state to take tax dollars and use them to compel private firms to meet public goals.

More on Monday.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

When we last left our little board -- located in a stairwell in the building I work in -- we had had a poster placed by someone unidentified (as was the board's user or users) twice placed on it which indicated opposition to affirmative action.  Such action is an indication that someone is asserting a private property right, rather unusual in that the board is on state property, not near someone's office or classroom, and had hitherto been used for postings by the dean's office for the college in which I work.  I had asked once about its ownership to someone in the dean's office (after the initial display was made) and got in return a shrug of the shoulders.  Adverse possession might attach to the board so many months later.

So I thought I should ask what happened to the counter-poster and wrote a note "Who took down the poster that was here this morning? Who owns this board?"  I signed the note.  Rather than answer me by email or phone, they simply wrote on my note:

At the bottom the respondent noted that the poster would return next week.

It did Monday afternoon, as the centerpiece of a brand new display:

Sorry to have cut off that little bit, as you might guess the first letter on the banner across the top is a 'w', as in "White Identity and Affirmative Action". The subtitle reads as a quote, "I'm in favor of affirmative action except when it comes to my jobs." (Italics and red in original.)  This time our interlocutors made clear their mission:

By our responses, it appears, someone in the department who now claims this board has removed the counter-poster, taken it to his or her classroom (which class? we do not know) and asked the students to draw their responses.  It is interesting that the title is called "White Identity...", for as best we know the artist who drew the counter-poster could be a person of color, or of disability.  The assumption is that anyone who disagrees with affirmative action must be white.  This would be news to Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams or Justice Thomas.  And the subtitle ascribes a bad motive for the counter-poster's opposition to affirmative action:  He or she would be for it except that it was she or he who lost the job.  As John Hood noted a few years ago, what matters here is who is doing the hiring:

...I think there may be good reasons for me to engage in race-conscious affirmative action. The key distinction involves agency. Government institutions are purportedly "owned" by all of us and at least can be said formally to represent all citizens. Thus they have no business adopting policies that discriminate--regardless of whether they are designed to advance or to redress bigotry--unless those policies are narrowly tailored to the needs of specific jobs, slots, or contracts. (As Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute once put it, it's OK for fire departments to turn down wheelchair-bound applicants for the job of fighting fires but not for the job of dispatching the firefighters.) Private actors, on the other hand, should enjoy the latitude to associate or disassociate with others in a free society, even if they do so for reasons most of us would find repugnant.

But judging the responses of these students, that is not OK with them:One of the classes that could have been the creator of this display is a course titled "Community and Democratic Citizenship." Nothing could be less democratic than the suggestion that one's free speech rights are dependent on someone else deciding whether or not you were 'ignorant'. But it could have been part of a different class. Would not that context help us understand the previous bulletin board and this one?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

On Friday I posted that this board had had an extra poster put on it, and then updated that the poster that disagreed with the board's premise was taken down. After posting that, I tacked a note to the board asking who controlled this board and why had the extra poster been taken down? I signed the note so as to leave no doubt who was asking, and put it on a small memo paper with the university's logo.

That evening I got a call from someone standing in front of my note and said someone had written a reply on the note. Next to "who owns this board?" was written "CMTY -- see Dr. Luke Tripp." Dr. Tripp is chair of the Community Studies program. I had speculated before that the board came from that department because there was a similar board that was identified as theirs. Now we know. I have received no other communication in this regard.

There was also scrawled on the note a message that the counter-poster would be returned on Monday. As of 45 minutes ago, it was not there. But someone else had put a copy of that poster up on the board at lunch time. The person who put it up was engaged in an experiment as well, and found the note removed within two hours of his re-posting.

I am now referring to the person in the counter-poster as Yezhov. (If you've never read that book, btw, it's well worth your time.)

Labels: higher education, SCSU

A few weeks ago I had spotted a new posting on the bulletin board I featured last summer, which had a series of drawings and slogans depicting "Daily Effects of White Privilege."  The new posting was drawn by someone who opposed affirmative action.  The drawing was there as I cam up the stairwell mid-morning but had been removed in the afternoon when I went to get a photo of it.

Yesterday another version appeared:

The thing in this students hand reads "REJECTED to promote diversity." I doubt this refers to SCSU directly -- we are not a selective institution such that admitting a student of color crowds out a student of pallor. But it could represent other schools, perhaps ones that the artist had applied to and was rejected from.

At the bottom there is a comment:

Notice: This poster does not insult anyone and it does not advocate discrimination. To remove this poster is to violate a student's academic freedom.

I think a great contrast to this particular display would have been for the student to not be anonymous. If you are going to ask for your academic freedom, you should do so openly and proudly. If the student was to face discipline, he or she should come forward and seek advice in defending his or her academic freedom. I for one would volunteer. And it would be a good contrast to this display, which has remained up now for over six months, unsigned and unattributed, left to have people believe it is a statement made on behalf of the institution. Perhaps it is; if so, why consign it to a stairwell?

I will watch to see if and when this added poster is removed like the last one.  Should the person who removes this addition be subject to any disciplinary action?

UPDATE:  Too late!  It's already been removed.  I know members of the administration read this blog, so let me ask them:  Will you investigate who is removing these posters?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

I'll post over the weekend on the financial matters of the week.  If you want to hear it instead of read it, I will be on the David Strom Show at 9:20 to discuss matters with David and Margaret, and then I will be flying semi-solo (Matt will be my co-pilot) for Final Word as Michael basks in the glow of his prize.  Please do listen in.

Meanwhile I'm helping to celebrate the inauguration of President Earl Potter here at SCSU.  Congratulations, Earl.  It was a marvelous ceremony, and a word of praise for the SCSU Concert Choir, who sang some beautiful and challenging music.

Labels: AM1280, NARN, Northern Alliance Radio Network, SCSU

It's not only religious liberals that somehow find it time to talk politics. Our own Women's Center just happened to notice hey! there's an election this year!

It seems timely and logical to address issues of public policy and politics during a presidential election year. Consequently, the Women’s Center chose this topic for the Fall 2008 theme for Women on Wednesday, a signature noon-hour lecture series with an 18-year history at SCSU. As in the past, this series seeks to address the issues that students, faculty and staff have identified as important and of interest to them. These issues include many areas of public policy that affect the lives of women, as well as men and children, on a daily basis, including violence against women, reproductive rights, immigration, sex education and teen pregnancy, citizenship, human rights, and women in the military.

Well certainly, that seems like a neat list. And one might think that given Governor Palin's own response to teen pregnancy and reproductive rights one might get a talk about this, and there it is "Reproductive Rights" on October 22. What do you want to bet we'll have someone speaking from the National Down Syndrome Society or maybe some research on teen pregnancy. That'd be nice. But I'm not hopeful given the list of other topics: Maze of Injustice; Citizenship for Equity and Social Justice; GLBT Civil Rights during a Presidential Election Year; and Let’s Get Real: Race and Sex in the 2008 Election.

Likewise we got notice of a talk being offered by "the Social Responsibility Masters program, in conjunction with the Women’s Center, Multicultural Student Services, the Department of Theatre, Film Studies and Dance, and the Department of Mass Communication" of the movie Uncounted. There will be no reading from John Fund; instead, the Secretary of State Mark Ritchie will be there. This is Mark Ritchie who ACORN's founder calls his "organizing colleague this April."

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a long time organizing colleague from the nonprofit sector, addressed the Board and told the story not only of his partnership with ACORN in Minnesota and nationally in deciding to run for this seat, but also of the work he has done with us on our key issue of Election Protection.

I plan to see one of the showings of the movie; I'd like to ask Secretary Ritchie how he plans to prevent the registration of dead people and people in prison that has been happening in Milwaukee last month. I've invited Secretary Ritchie's #1 fan to join me.

UPDATE: More "timely and logical" addressing of "public policy" at Metro State in Denver.

Labels: higher education, politics, SCSU

A note from our faculty union president:

President Potter has asked that a Diversity Task Force be formed and he has created a structure for the task force and a means of populating the task force. Both the formation of and structure for the Diversity Task Force have been reviewed and supported by the Faculty Association.

The Task Force will develop a comprehensive Diversity Plan that addresses all aspects of the University’s efforts to create and sustain a diverse learning community. These aspects include but are not limited to: student recruitment and retention, workforce composition and development, the campus climate, the relationship between academic program development and administration to diversity, the relationship of faculty scholarship to issues of diversity, the role of the University’s community engagement efforts both as service to the community and as a venue for student learning and development and the development of a reflective approach to continuous improvement in the realization of the University’s commitment to diversity.

President Potter has asked that all nominations to the Task Force be people with knowledge and experience with diversity in the educational setting, through prior education and/or scholarship; participation in or certification in diversity training for trainers, a history of activism around diversity and social justice issues or experience working and/or teaching in settings characterized by their diversity.

Question to readers: Should I apply to this task force? Would my research into bulletin boards be considered "knowledge and experience with diversity in the educational setting"?

Labels: Feminists, higher education, SCSU

In the newsletter of our union, regarding the MnSCU Code of Conduct:

Faculty should be aware of one important policy change in the Employee Ethics portion of the Code. State law allows faculty to accept free samples of textbooks and related materials. Even though free samples become the property of the faculty to whom they are given, the new Code includes a policy restricting how faculty may dispose of such items. Part 3, Subpart B (1) prohibits faculty from selling free sample books and materials “for the personal benefit of the faculty member.” Under the Code, faculty are still permitted to donate such items to charity. Alternatively, you may sell such items as long as the sale does not profit the faculty member personally. For example, the policy would permit faculty in a department to pool their unused textbooks to be sold to fund student travel or to benefit the educational needs of the department.

In A.D. 2008, semester was beginning.

Professor: What happen ?

Office manager: Somebody set up us the administration.

Provost's office: We get email as official university communication.

Professor: What !

Provost Office: Main screen turn on.

Professor: It's you !!

MnSCU: How are you colleagues !!

MnSCU: All your book are belong to us.

MnSCU: You are on the way to principles of economics.

Professor: What you say !!

MnSCU: You have no chance to survive make your time.

MnSCU: Ha ha ha ha ....

Provost Office: Professor !! *

Professor: Take off every 'duty day'!!

Professor: You know what you doing.

Professor: Move 'duty day'.

Professor: For great justice.

AYBABTU.

The above attempt at humor will resonate more with workers here at SCSU. The links may help explain. My textbook sample sales fund a thank-you pizza party for the department student workers and have for several years. But what's the ethic involved here? Do we think selling textbooks makes their price higher? What about the revenue the university gets from renting the on-campus bookstore?

The next step may be the administration choosing our books.

Labels: Feminists, Minnesota, SCSU

A note on campus email tells a sad story. Somebody (or -bodies) knocked over some potted plants on the south end of the campus, pulled out the flowers that were in them and scatter flora and soil around the walk that they sat near. The walk is near a child care center run by the university. "The 3-5 year old children of the Lindgren Child Care Center, who enjoy these pots daily as they go for campus walks, sat by one of the overturned pots and reflected on the destruction," the note told us.

OK, I know where you think I'm going, but I kind of think it's good to have kids realize there are jerks in the world. After having the children say they felt sad and the flowers were "happy", "pretty" and "smelled good", they were asked what they would say if they could talk to the perpetrator(s).

• “Could you please stop knocking over the pretty plants.”
• “Dammit” which means, “No tipping over our plants.”
• “Never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever knock the plants down again.”

I will never say the word "dammit" without a smile from here on. Thanks to the people of Building and Grounds who were able to turn something crappy into something cute.

Labels: Feminists, SCSU

The first bulletin board has now been up for the better part of eight months and aside this blog has had no public reaction ... until today.
In case that note doesn't read well for you, it says "Is there not a black man about to be president? This rhetoric divides not solves. -- Black Man"

It is possible that the note isn't really from a person of color. But presuming the display has been erected for educational purposes, it should please its creator(s) that it has received a public reaction. We'll continue to follow that story.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Here are the remaining shots that struck me as interesting of bulletin boards in the classroom and faculty office building in which I work. This consists only of certain posters I found.

There are lots of posters for internships, being as internships are seen by many recruiters and placement officers as a great way to get into a potential position with an organization. But some are more interesting choices. Here's one to intern with Working America, an arm of the AFL-CIO, whose job is political activism. You have a chance to "get paid to fight back" -- now that's an educational experience, isn't it?Most workplaces have posters that ask workers who are victims of discrimination to report their experiences to the proper office. I had paid this one no mind at all until I read the small print. Did you know if you discriminate against someone who is a member or active in "a local commission as defined by law" you get the same rights as someone discriminated against them for their race or sexual orientation? Who thought that law up? I haven't heard of such crimes, or even that it was one. I don't think I've ever had a beef with the parks commissioner.Two comments about this. First, it is on a board in a very high-traffic area and has been on this board for almost a year. So thousands of people walk by a brochure about female genital cutting. Towards what end? I probably have passed this a couple hundred of times without figuring that out; maybe I'm just dense. Second, this is a criticism of a practice that happens "extensively in Africa" and many countries in the Middle East. Many years ago I knew an Egyptian immigrant couple whose son went to school at SCSU. They ran a long-since-gone restaurant that was the only place I could get a good plate of baba ganouj back then. One night the wife of this couple came to me quite upset; her son was supposed to write a paper about the practice, and it was clear that he was surprised to hear it happened in his home country. The son did not know what to write.

There are over 100 students studying here from countries that appear on that list; the ESL classes for intensive study each summer are taught in a classroom close to this poster. I wonder what they think about this.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

I am done with bulletin board #3, but while I was shooting that board I saw a few other things that I thought Scholars readers might find amusing. These are assorted postings on bulletin boards in my office building (Stewart Hall) that captured my eye. Small comments attach. I will be off tomorrow in search of new material from other buildings.

This is a work in progress, about the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act," the law signed by Bill Clinton in 1996 which was to end welfare. The starting piece in the upper left corner says "A nation's laws affect a nation's ..." and nothing more yet. The left has opposed PRWORA since its enactment; it will be interesting to see where this one goes. It might be a new series on this blog some day.

Here's a board with information students might want to get about the university's graduate program in social responsibility. The little flyer in the bottom right corner was particularly interesting; let's take a closer look.

Three steps Towards Changing the World:

1. Enroll in the Master's program in Social Responsibility at St. Cloud State University.
2. Educate yourself about such issues as racism, gender bias, heterosexism, animal rights, globalization and many more. (...and many more? Like what? Check the list.)
3. Use your knowledge to help make a difference in the lives of others!

I hear you can get pizza with that.

Almost directly across from this board is a maintenance closet used by the people who keep our classrooms and hallways clean. On the door:

The bumpersticker reads: "If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can read this in English, thank a soldier." You might even say soldiers " make a difference in the lives of others!"

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Another concern of the bulletin board is bullying in schools. So the sign at the bottom of this picture tells us that "This is what a bully-free world would look and feel like." OK, that sounds like a good plan! But what words do we include for "the no bully zone"? Laughter. Opportunity. Fun. Yes, that's good. Happy. Harmonious. Kids harmonious? Sometimes, and sometimes not.

Inclusive. Opportunity. Diverse.

Wait a second. Are we saying bullying has a racial component to it? It's interesting that the pictures of children together are of different races, but I think only one picture has children of two races.

While this is all for this particular board, I have a few more from nearby boards that will make a nice essay for tomorrow and Friday that I will include in this series.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

As we saw yesterday, this bulletin board -- appearing in a hallway near the Social Work Department at the university -- is trying to make points about sex education. Along with many condoms and their (opened) packages we find discussion of feeling during sex, some myths about sex and pregnancy, a lament that "only 49% of college health centers provide emergency contraception" ... which I think is not a condom. "2800 teens each day become pregnant," one note chastises, indicating that it thinks teen pregnancy is a problem. I would think people in social work would believe so; it must be part of their experience.

The board seems to dismiss the possibility that abstinence is helping reduce teen pregnancy, despite plenty of evidence and bipartisan support for including abstinence in programs to address the issue. Note that while I linked to some of Robert Rector's work, I don't necessarily agree that one should not talk about condoms. I simply think the board goes over the top in its pushing for condoms over abstinence.

This board appears in a hallway leading to offices of the Social Work Department, to which some newly enrolling students will walk in the next few weeks, some with their parents, to receive advising. It would be interesting to get their reaction to this board. Would it give one pause? Would there be nervous laughter? Would it raise questions? Would it educate?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Let's start with this wider view: this is part of the bulletin board that includes appeals for peace and affordable education. A lot of pictures cut out of magazine around it. If this is a classroom presentation, I'll just suggest that Littlest -- who celebrates her 14th birthday today -- can do better than this display. But click to enlarge that picture, and tell me what those are on the far right?

Yes, that's right: they're condoms. I'll start with this one for today:
The blue pieces of paper suggest these facts

• "1 in 3 women get pregnant under age 20." Well, the National Center for Health Statistics reports 40.5 live births for 1,00o population ages15-19, so unless there are a whole lot of abortions going on there, that figure looks just a little high.
• "80% of abstinence only curricular contain false, misleading & distorted information." This is based on a report commissioned by Henry Waxman that gets repeated in much of the NOW and other feminist literature. Of course, it's not about what the parents want, right? Is that a problem according to the third piece of paper...
• "Most adolescents learn sex ed from parents, friends & media before programs start." I cannot tell what they mean by this; are the programs spreading misinformation, or are the parents and friends? Who has the right information? Oh yes, that's right, must be the people who make these posters.

More on this board tomorrow.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This bulletin board (see here for a review of the others) is at the entry to a set of offices for the Department of Social Work in my office building. Hundreds of students pass by here each school day. I do not know if this is the result of work in their classes, but it appears to be a composite of projects done by different individuals or groups. It is unlike the previous two boards.

The top image is of President Bush "wearing" a t-shirt that says "I [heart] Hugo Chavez", with fake currency around him. He is standing at a lectern with the presidential seal. The bubble quote over him was folded over when I saw it, so I held it up to take the second picture. It reads "Americans misunderestimated me! I approve raising the poverty line, increasing social welfare and implementing a living wage."

I would like to know the purpose of this particular course, if indeed this was coursework. If it's not, and it's on a departmental bulletin board, it's a bit worse as a statement about the values of social work programs. Perhaps this is a means to educate about the dispositions expected of majors.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is a preview of coming attractions regarding bulletin boards we find on the university campus. This is a partial; the particular bulletin board we will study next is quite large and in a relatively narrow hallway. (I don't own a wide-angle lens.) Yes, that is a "I [heart] Hugo Chavez" shirt below President Bush's head. You can start discussion there if you like.

This is the third series of a continuing study. The summary of the first series is here. As we have not done a summary of the second series, here are links to the entire run:

• Preview
• Part 1, Child Savers
• Part 2, Don't React in Anger
• Part 3, Open Your Shades
• Part 4, The Postman
• Part 5, Hire Locally
• Part 6, Party!

I look forward to your comments on this new bulletin board, which I discovered only last week -- these might be the best ones yet.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Today's entry is a winding up of this bulletin board I think. It appears the class is adding more to the board since I took pictures, so something more might be forthcoming soon. As block parties go, this one is a little timid. Just two couples saying "How are you today?" and "We are fine how are you?" It's hard to believe one would need to be coached in a simple act of neighborliness.

The piece reminds me of Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone. In a 2006 Time article, he wrote that we simply need to make more friends.

Social isolation has many well-documented side effects. Kids fail to thrive. Crime rises. Politics coarsens. Generosity shrivels. Death comes sooner (social isolation is as big a risk factor for premature death as smoking). Well-connected people live longer, happier lives, even if they have to forgo a new Lexus to spend time with friends.

So what can be done? Unlike global warming, we can solve this problem fairly easily by simply getting more involved in our communities and spending more time with family and friends. Family-friendly workplaces would help too. Reaching out to a neighbor or connecting with a long-lost pal--even having a picnic or two--could just save your life.

The one thing missing from that list is religion, odd because, as Arthur Brooks points out in his new Gross National Happiness, "about half of all voluntary associational membership, which brings great happiness to millions of Americans, is worship-related." And, unlike going to a club, a party or a volunteer effort, going to church doesn't suffer from diminishing marginal returns to happiness (at least up to weekly attendance.) (Bowling Alone, pp. 333-34, Gross National Happiness, p. 47.)

No picture of a church appears in any of the drawings of "building community".

Background of this series here.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Today's daily effects is an interesting one. On the surface I should support the idea that a voluntary transaction is being applauded for building community. But suppose the kids on the block want $20 but the guy in the next town would do it for $10. Should I sacrifice $10 to build my community? Suppose I use this logic as a means of supporting import restrictions? I know, it only says odd jobs, but I actually hire someone as my handyman, whose livelihood depends on selling me his services.

Background of this series here.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Today's bulletin board offering is actually rather nice, given Mrs. S father was a postal carrier. But the fellow drove a jeep, as does the guy who delivers my mail (and I live in the city). One time his predecessor, now retired, came to ask for any of our excess apples from our two prodigious trees. I never did get his name, or to know him. Yet he brought the mail faithfully, we gave him a Christmas card and gift each year -- I was unfamiliar with this practice before marrying the daughter of a postman -- and we both enjoyed the experience. Were we "building community"? No, I just wanted my Sports Illustrated.
Background of this series here.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

One nice thing about the WEA meetings each year is the high number and high quality of its sessions on the economics of sports. I was happy to catch a beer and a couple of these sessions while there. One (which I missed because of a conflicting session I was involved with) was on the economics of sports facilities. I don't recall if we covered any college facilities in this discussion.

SCSU announced last week that it was going to redesign the National Hockey Center, the building that houses our only Division I program.

St. Cloud State University President Earl H. Potter III last week discussed the preliminary details of a renovation that is scheduled to be completed in the next four years without forcing the university’s hockey team to play elsewhere during the construction.

The Legislature this session allocated $6.5 million for a $14 million renovation. The university then revised its plans to create a more ambitious facility that will “give Central Minnesota something it’s never had before,” Potter said.

He is convening a leadership team to begin raising the $22 million in private dollars needed to complete the project, he said. ...

“It will dramatically change the fan experience and the experience for our student-athletes,” Potter said of the post-renovation building. “We will reposition St. Cloud State in the WCHA, in terms of our ability to attract and compete for the best student-athletes. And it will offer Central Minnesota an entertainment venue and a series of activities that it’s never had before.” ...

He described a facility that would be a small-scale Xcel Energy Center, a complex that puts fans first, emphasizes the history and tradition of St. Cloud State hockey and “reeks of Husky hockey,” he said. A team store would carry Husky merchandise.

The renovation will include accommodations and acoustics to host concerts and other events that require facilities larger than what the St. Cloud area has, he said.

The local newspaper, which has yet to find a public spending project it didn't like, of course gushed over it but with one caveat,

How does such a vision complement (not compete with) plans to expand the St. Cloud Civic Center?

Remember, city officials are making steady (albeit slow) progress on a publicly funded $30 million expansion there. So how will these separate plans work in concert (no pun intended) and bolster the area’s appeal not just to hockey fans, but other venues in need of large spaces?

You might think that perhaps we could choose between them, since expanding the Civic Center is not expected to use private dollars. Those folks have been campaigning hard for more state bonding money and are likely to come back to the local government to get tax dollars as well. If SCSU can raise the money privately, isn't that better? My guess is that you'd have all three venues for concerts -- the Paramount Theater (under 1000 seats); the Civic Center, which I think will come in at no more than 2500 and for which even at that size parking will be very tight; and the NHC which has ample parking used during the daytime for students, and which as expanded might hold 7000. Does a metro area of 100,000 (160,000 if you count everything in Stearns County out to Sauk Center and everything in Benton County past Foley) need three such venues?

But the more basic question for St. Cloud State is what the value is in this investment. This week's Chronicle of Higher Education (temp link for non subscribers) highlights the questionable nature of investment small schools make in athletic facilities by studying a set of D-III schools in Pennsylvania that are shelling out more than $20 million each for new facilities.

Mr. [John A.] Fry, president of Franklin & Marshall, says the building frenzy has made all levels of college sports more professional, though he expressed concern that money is sometimes siphoned away from academic projects for sports.

"It's fair to say there is a bit of an arms race in Division III," he says. "You see a lot more spending on athletics, and you wonder if that's the highest and best use of those dollars."

The competition is for athletes, and many of the donors we are seeking for the NHC will be people who support athletics first and foremost. More money brings better student-athletes, and given the competitive nature of the NHC, those donors are going to want to build something that they think will attract better players than other arenas in the WCHA.

Does it help academics at the university? There the evidence is less clear. The most important item in driving academic donations appears to be television appearances, not winning championships. (Grimes and Chressanthis [1994]) Given the low viewership of college hockey, I would think it more likely a donor campaign for NHC construction works as a substitute rather than a complement to academic fundraising. All the results that suggest complementary focus on D-I basketball and football. There's a case to be made for the uniqueness of college hockey in Minnesota (the state of hockey! we're told) but I don't believe it.

BTW, nail soup. It's a variation of the stone soup story that progressives have now turned into some fable. (There's a lunch group on campus that uses this name. Or at least used to be.) I like the Swedish version better. This is the second time the university has dared to think bigger about a facility on campus. If the administration succeeds in both fundraising efforts, it's a big deal for us -- we haven't seen that around here since the first building of NHC.

Labels: economics, higher education, SCSU, sports

Today's edition of the bulletin board contains a rather interesting image. The display wants you to "Open Your Shades." A multicultural group of children plays outside.Is the issue that we aren't seeing them? Or that they want to look in? It turns out several of the items on this wall come from a poster on "How to Build Community."

Or grow one, as we'll have pictures of soon here in a non-bulletin board edition of Daily Effects.

Background of this series here.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Today's is just a caption, which might be the best encapsulation of liberal fascism I have seen on campus. This sits on the middle of the bulletin board highlighted yesterday.
The reminder of Christopher Lasch's "Hillary Clinton, Child Saver" could not be more compelling. As we approach Independence Day Friday, a recollection of this quote:

"We can talk all we want about freedom and opportunity, about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what does all that mean to a mother or father who can't take a sick child to the doctor?"

h/t: Ed Morrissey. Goldberg found that It Takes a Village “argues for interventions on behalf of children from literally the moment they are born.” Why do we have a classroom project (or so it appears) based on an assault on parental rights? If a parent walked by this while bringing her son or daughter to my office for advising for freshman orientation, what should I say?

The more I look at these pictures on the bulletin board, the more I think It Takes a Village is the theme.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This board will be the source of the second series of stories showing indoctrination.  This is in a common hallway leading from the stairs of the first series to my department's offices.  "Community Studies" is the name of a department on our campus that houses two programs and other courses.  There are similarities between the two boards, but it is not clear who authored or sponsored the first bulletin board.  Nevertheless, I think the boards should be viewed as elements of a broader theme regarding what is perceived as the role of higher education.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Over the last three weeks we have shown a bulletin board that was titled "Daily Effects of White Privilege" on the campus. The bulletin board is in a medium-traffic area of a classroom and office building in which I work at SCSU. Each day we have taken a different picture of it and displayed it for you to look at. Above is the bulletin board, and links to each individual entry:

• Part one -- shady looking
• Part two -- Cosmo
• Part three -- May I speak with the manager?
• Part four -- the neighborhood
• Part five -- history
• Part six -- the hospital
• Part seven -- the checkout
• Part eight -- the lecture hall
• Part nine -- the news
• Part ten -- the library
• Part 11 -- Band-Aids
• Part 12 -- speakers
• Part 13 -- the mall

Please come back to the blog for more bulletin boards. They're everywhere. This post will be added to the right-side index of this blog as part of our boards-and-doors features.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part thirteen of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here, and a billboard for the other six here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months. This is the next to last edition, and soon we will have an index for all thirteen days. There will be a second set from another bulletin board next week.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

Honestly, I cannot find a connection between the picture and the plaque in this one and for awhile thought the picture was mislabeled except for the giant #5 on the podium. I can only guess that this is a complaint of a lack of political candidates of color. Ironic, if so, and rather dismissive of politicians as being harassing.

UPDATE (Sat.): This was scheduled to go up Wednesday. I don't know why this remained in draft. I will post more of these pictures next week.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

The Moving Picture Institute, producers of Indoctrinate U, blogged recently about the University of Colorado's notion of having a chair of conservative policy.

The ongoing debate about higher ed reform tends to be quite polarized, and there are many issues upon which the different sides of the debate are seemingly never going to agree. But [Bud] Peterson's plans for a conservative chair were different. They had a peculiar unifying effect as commenters from all sides expressed strong reservations about a faculty position that seemed more concerned with candidates' political viewpoints than with their expertise, and that also contained more than a hint of tokenism. Chancellor Peterson's efforts are understandable, many conceded, but that does not make them especially viable.

Very sensible, though some seem quite willing to accept tokens.

We're ordering up a copy of IndocU, by the way, and looking for a place to show it this fall on campus. Interested parties may contact me on the blog's email address, comments at blog url without the www part.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part twelve of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found here, here, here, here, and here, and a billboard for the other six here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months. This is the next to last edition, and soon we will have an index for all thirteen days. There will be a second set from another bulletin board next week.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

In this picture, the drawing seems to be of children in a classroom. A student of color at the board (on the left half of the picture) says "Please Listen". Two blonde-haired white children playing to the right say "Yeah I don't care" and "Thank you." A second black student (smaller than the others) says to a third blonde, "Why aren't you listening?"

Think teachers ever go through this in their classrooms?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part ten of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found here, here, here, and here, and a billboard for the other six here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

Certainly there was an attempt to make Band-Aids look the color of the people they covered, but even in the Caucasian world there are many colors. Littlest Scholar liked her Garfield Band-Aids when she was small, and they can still be part of a fashion design.

Stores, of course, market to their customers. When I am in a downtown hotel on business and have forgotten something in my toiletries, I go to a nearby druggist. In many, because their clientčle has a higher share of people of color, there is a separate section for hair products aimed at people of African descent. For the very same reason, I cannot buy most of the Middle Eastern food products I like to eat here in St. Cloud; this is not an act of discrimination but an act of marketing, of lowering transactions costs for the greatest number. I instead travel to the Twin Cities when I want to buy, say, halvah treats for the house. In contrast, because my family likes Asian foods and St. Cloud has a substantial Asian community, I do not have to go to the Cities for those products. So why isn't the Band-Aid story analogous?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part ten of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found here, here, and here, and a billboard for the other six here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

Perusing the Forbidden Library list of books includes books removed for being racially insensitive, such as Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird or the Little House books.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part nine of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found here, and here, and a billboard for the other six here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

From yesterday's New York Times, an image makeover for Michelle Obama. Kind of dampens that drawing. Have you seen Oprah yet today?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part eight of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found via yesterday's item here and a billboard for the other six here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

The yellow-faced person to the left is lecturing a group of stick figures drawn in brown sitting in chairs, as if the person to the left is leading a classroom. The balloon voices for the leader or lecturer, "In today's meeting everyone will listen to me! Because I am the boss!" 83% of SCSU faculty are white, as is about 80% of the student body. (Data from here.) Less than 3% are black, and 7% domestic-born students of color overall. More than 6% are international students. I'm not sure the university this picture describes; had the student-artist drawn one student of color in a classroom with otherwise all-white students (and a white faculty member), I would get the point. One might then discuss the white valedictorian at Morehouse.

Along that line, your discussion question for today: Last year two researchers at the Virginia Tech claimed that students who attended historically black colleges and universities earned higher income than those (black) students did in more diverse universities. Here's a link to VaTech's press release; I do not see a copy of the paper itself, but its abstract is available. Assuming these findings are valid, how would you explain them?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part seven of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found from yesterday's item here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

The bubble thought of the checkout clerk in this supermarket reads "She looks classy, rich and white ... she can afford what she wants." The indoctrination I received at the supermarket was a sign that read "In God We Trust. All others pay cash." And indeed, the "classy, rich and white" woman is in the picture. Had she been trying to write a check, I might have understood this picture better.

I think to a man, a check is like a note from your mother that says "I don't have any money, but if you'll contact these people, I'm sure they'll stick up for me... If you just trust me this one time I don't have any money but I have these... I wrote on these... is this of any value at all? -- Jerry Seinfeld

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part six of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found from yesterday's item here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

In this picture the white privilege is a presumably white person getting served at a hospital before a person of color. I'm pretty sure I've seen this happen at hospital emergency rooms, even to me. Is it racism, or rudeness, or triage? This reminds me of a story in Paul Heyne's The Economic Way of Thinking when discussing non-price rationing. When price doesn't ration scarce goods, discrimination is possible. But there are many other non-price rationing mechanisms.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part five of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found from yesterday's item here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

In case that picture is too small for you, the book they are all looking at is titled "History by Whites". This is specific to the U.S., given the map and flag. Is white privilege a uniquely American experience? Perhaps we could have a map and flag of Rwanda and change "Whites" to "Hutus". Or Chinese looking at a history of Indonesia or Malaysia.

Thomas Sowell wrote of the success of the M Street School, later Dunbar High, from the 1880s on to 1955. It was the only black high school in DC, along with three white public high schools. In 1899 each took a standardized test, and M St. beat out two of the three white schools in test scores. Nobody was reading Zinn back then.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part four of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found from yesterday's item here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

The picture is innocuous enough, containing two houses with one neighbor greeting the other, "Hey how's it going?" Kids on the swing. But the caption indicates that the reason they great each other so cheerily is because they are of the same race. Does your neighborhood look like this? Or is this some hazy memory of the past?

UPDATED (1pm): While tossing out papers on my desk -- a neverending task -- I stumbled across this article from the Philadelphia Fed. The data provided says neighborhoods are still relatively segregated, and argues that when given experiments to choose which neighbors someone would like to have, African-Americans preferred a neighborhood where two of five of their neighbors were of their own race, a fraction greater than you would find in the general population. The author believes discrimination does play a role, but not the only role, in the racial composition of neighborhoods.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part one of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found from yesterday's item here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

This picture is of a person of color with a mop and pail in the foreground. To the left, one white person says to another "May I speak with the manager?" At top and in background, a white man emerges from a room labeled "manager's office." The number 24) on this tag would suggest to me that there were many other 'effects' offered for drawings. We cannot be sure we have the entire set here, perhaps only a best-of display.

Perhaps we should learn more about white privilege; they have entire conferences. There's a lot of groups -- in particular church groups -- promoting this agenda. But they say "this conference is not about beating up white folks." You see, you were supposed to be blind:

I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant to remain oblivious. White Privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks. (emphasis added, though the apostrophe in the original.)

You might want to look at a few earned assets as well, however. For instance, a government study of the working poor showed that black males with a bachelor's degree were less likely to be below the poverty line than white males with a bachelor's. Marital status has a bearing on earnings and employment as well.

And again, tell me, who is the source of the intentionality of this obliviousness?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part one of a continuing series, background here. The picture from yesterday is here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months. Some people do not have trouble finding dolls of color, and the possibility of Tyra Banks or the Williams sisters on magazine covers has apparently not made much of an impression on the classroom. (I caught Littlest looking at the inside picture of Ocho Cinco over the weekend; he was, um, less clothed than on the cover, with a strategically placed magazine.)

What do you think was the educational purpose of this assignment?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part one of a continuing series, background here. This appears in a classroom and office building stairwell, and has been left up for months. The first picture is of the caption provided at the bottom of the picture, as seen in the second. The balloon on the guy speaking on the right reads "He's shady looking." That word in the first picture that was mutilated reads, I believe, "trained". There is no authorship offered for either the caption or the art anywhere on the display.

Your question for today: Who did the student who drew this picture thought did the training? Who did the caption writer think did it? If these are from a class -- student organizations must identify themselves when they post flyers -- what do you think was the professor's intent?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

I thought about trying to create a full photo essay of this. But instead, we will do this with one a days. The picture above is a bulletin board that appears in the back stairwell (at the first landing) of the classroom and office building in which I work. Its title, "Daily Effects of White Privilege", describes a set of thirteen sketches -- amateur, perhaps done by children but I do not know the artists, they are not signed -- that are to describe things that white people take for granted about the lives they lead. Next to each is a sentence describing that privilege. I have a second board also photographed that has similar art but seems to have been drawn for a different purpose. Both are in areas where students, faculty, and staff walk every day. This one pictured above has been in the hallway for months; the photos were taken in early April for this set, in May for the other.

We now have freshman orientation going on and the young students and their parents are walking by these displays. Keep that in mind as you view the individual pictures. What message is SCSU sending to prospective and incoming students?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

The St. Cloud Times undertook a project to study state employee salaries. Their data center provides a searchable database that you can use to look anyone up, including me if you wish. (They also provide a separate database for the University of Minnesota -- when I see what my colleagues in the U's economics department who are about my age make, ugh!)

A two-part story began Sunday with a look at overtime pay to state employees, with $50 million paid in 2007 out of a $2.58 billion payroll. The public-sector unions of course claim this is due to too few public sector workers, while critics like Phil Krinkie and Craig Westover highlighted the demand for public-sector employees being driven up by greater regulation. But most interesting was the table that appeared in the print story (though not on the website that I can see) of the top 10 salaries in the state. Tops is MnSCU Chancellor James McCormack, who earns over $350,000. Second, though, was an SCSU professor who earned over $250,000; another on the faculty here was near $22ok. By comparison, Gov. Pawlenty gets $120,303 as salary for being governor.

What's up with that? The second part looks at the pay rate for teaching online courses. Here it's pretty simple: Most courses are 3 credits, and for each student in such an online class you get $195. That is not part of one's regular salary but paid on top. And, unlike teaching an extra course in the classroom, you get more, the more students who register. And, there's no limit contractually on how many of these you can do. (Teaching overloads for lecture classes are capped in the contract, and the cap is only lifted in emergency cases, largely so that opportunities are spread around a department more evenly.) Both of those two SCSU faculty in the top ten are providers of online classes.

The article identifies 10,400 seats in online courses. If we assume they were all three-credit classes, that's more than $2 million annually paid to those faculty, not peanuts on a campus with about a $140 million budget, of which about half are faculty salaries. But what doesn't get mentioned in that story is that students pay extra for the online course (between $235 and $250 per credit versus $175 for the lecture course.) They aren't just lucrative for the faculty teaching those courses. More is staying in the offices of our continuing studies program.

Hard to say what will happen with this information. It's always been public, and I don't object to the transparency of my own salary. It was part of the agreement to work here. But the scrutiny over the online courses might cause some changes there. Like many universities, ours has taken a serious approach to assessing effectiveness in teaching. One hopes that online courses, like those in our lecture halls, have evidence of student learning. If they do, I don't see why we should have concerns about who gets paid what. And if they don't, it wouldn't matter how much you pay them. You can't find a bargain in bad teaching.

Labels: higher education, Minnesota, SCSU

It's a great thing for St. Cloud area students to perform an original choral piece. Even greater that they are going overseas. And better yet, an oratorio about the Holocaust delivered at the site of a Nazi death camp.

But the title of the piece, From anti-Semitic hotbed to healing: St. Cloud area students to perform oratorio at Nazi death camps once again has some Twin Cities writer who probably spends NO TIME in St. Cloud using the swastika story to paint an entire town as a hotbed when the one student who admitted to drawing a swastika comes from a St. Paul suburb. Yet we had to be open and pro-active, and we continue to get this kind of press. Cui bono? Those who use the claims of "systemic racism" to further their urban racial political agenda.

Labels: higher education, politics, SCSU

This week many campuses are seeing students protesting their inability to carry a concealed weapon while at school. The protests consists of students going about their business while wearing an empty holster (and one that is clearly seen as being empty.) The group Students for Concealed Carry on Campus have organized themselves for a second such protest (the first occurred last October.)

The two purposes of an Empty Holster Protest are:

1. To represent to the public that students, faculty, and guests on college campuses are left defenseless or, metaphorically, with empty holsters.

2. To start a dialogue with students and faculty members who may not know the facts of the issue.

Last Friday, the campus communications office sent out a notice telling us that this was happening here, explaining the protest with the link I used at the top and this:

Participants will be wearing t-shirts and EMPTY holsters and handing out flyers. The national organization sponsoring the protest has made it clear that students are NOT to carry anything inside the holsters. Students will not carry signs or banners and have made a commitment to avoiding any disruptive behavior. Behavior outside the promised parameters may be reported to Public Safety...

I must say that last sentence worried me. I have no recollection of any notice on our campus letting people know to report "behavior outside the promised parameters". Those parameters are determined by the letter that the group is having all the campus chapters use. In short, they can wear the empty holsters and t-shirts (which are a little too expensive, so the students here have said they would eschew them) and can speak to people who ask about the holsters, but they would not approach any groups or hand out literature.

To its credit, the administration issued a statement Monday morning that clarified that the students' speech rights were to be respected, from President Earl Potter under an email titled "Peaceful Protest This Week":

I recognize that this protest comes at a time when our sensitivities to safety on campus have been heightened by recent events. Nevertheless, I need to remind us all that while individuals in a university community may disagree with the opinions expressed by the protesters, we have the responsibility to be tolerant of their views and must not retaliate against advocates for these views. We must remember that these students have the first amendment right to free speech and the right to protest within university guidelines which prohibit disruption or interference with classes or other university business.

The flow of campus email, which over the weekend had faculty and staff looking for ways to stop the protest turned to decrying the students' insistence that they be allowed to advocate for guns, because guns are bad, or that guns are only desired by people who wish to do us harm. (Of course, articles like Arthur Brooks' in last Saturday's WSJ fall on deaf ears. Mitch, by the way, has an excellent commentary on that today.)

Some of the early comments included (direct quotes):

• how are we to know if the empty holster toting student’s intention is for safety or for terror?
• I would not feel safe having students walk into a classroom with holsters
• I find this disturbing at the very least. Brandishing what "appears to be a weapon" can constitute fifth degree assault

These were before the President's letter, and all were thinking that somehow it could and should be stopped. Afterwards, the comments turned to:

• It is unfortunate that people believe simple slogans like "Guns don't' kill people--People do" to answer complex questions about guns, freedom, and safety!
• the fact that there are people who are lobbying for the right to bring guns to a university campus -- into classrooms and university buildings, no less -- fills me with extreme terror.
• Nothing about these arguments so far even acknowledges that the tragedies at Virginia tech, Recori, columbine, and numerous others ever happened.
• I know that the opposition would say that "dangerous criminals and armed killers" would still be armed, but I like the odds better if fewer students are "carrying"--especially those young people whose good judgment is not yet in full blossom.
• I can just see it now: a grading complaint. Both the professor and the student put their guns on the table, and then begin the conversation.
  
• I accept the rights of the holster wearers to illustrate their opinions, but I hope our elected officials have the good sense to not change the laws to their liking. I’d be more comfortable if the holstered protestors also wore their marksmanship merit badges, military sharpshooter rankings, or any other evidence of requisite skill and composure.

I did not participate much in this discussion, as I realized how little I knew, but one would have to say that if the purpose of an Empty Holster Protest was to start a dialogue, they certainly got that. The question is, what happens after starting it?

Through students I knew on campus I was able to speak with two participants in this protest, Terrance McCloskey and Bill Jacobson. They agreed to meet me and another faculty member interested in First Amendment issues, Kathy Uradnik, in my office. McCloskey identified himself as a licensed firearms instructor, though so far he has taught only one class. Both came wearing empty holsters.
I placed the holster for my Treo alongside theirs; I then put my Treo in Bill's holster. It was a little small for the holster, but it was snug. As you can see from the picture, they are not obvious to anyone not looking closely, and any claim that they would be disruptive to the classroom seems a real stretch to me.

SCCC has advocated that each student group provide notification to the campus they are participating in the event. The SCSU students -- which they reported numbered "around 30" and included "a majority of the Student Government Association body" -- sent notices to Public Safety and to the student organizations group. They received a call about their "proposed" protest from administrative vice president Steve Ludwig, to whom they reported again that the holsters would be empty. They told me Ludwig expressed concern for negative emotional reactions to the holsters, which given the quotes above from faculty would seem well-founded. They also reported that they had a few students participate in the October protest as a test run. One student at that time had grabbed the holster Jacobson was wearing, "to check to see if it was empty." Other than that, there had been no reaction.

I asked if there was more reaction this time. Jacobson said that he had six people talk to him in the last two hours. McCloskey said he had not gotten any reactions today. They had had reported to them that one Public Safety sergeant had told a watch that they should be on the lookout and write up reports if any of the protesters got out of line, and one report was that a faculty member, well known to us, had started to approach them to talk but then backed away. Protesters are instructed not to approach anyone; I asked if they had literature to hand out if they were asked, but McCloskey replied that they had no money to print flyers.

We spent time reviewing other complaints and reactions. It is worth reminding people that the age at which one could get a permit is 21, so that some of the concerns of guns in the hands of "young people whose good judgment is not yet in full blossom" has been contemplated by the law already. We discussed restrictions on less-than-lethal alternatives like TASERs and pepper spray. Students can't carry TASERs either, Jacobson said, and the campus' student handbook extends the gun ban to "any other weapon."

Longtime readers of this blog know I do not own a gun. I haven't fired one since getting my rifle merit badge in Boy Scouts. I tried a handgun at that time, but not since. A couple of years ago Littlest wanted to learn about shooting a rifle, so we sent her to the classes and I went and watched her field class. She was 11. She was excited to try this, but she also was very respectful of a gun that day.

I share the fear many of my colleagues have of a handgun insofar as I am ignorant of their use. My conversation with McCloskey and Jacobson had one very strong impact on me: I was more aware afterwards of how little I know. I have no way of knowing, for example, how much a person trained to carry a concealed weapon would know about protecting the weapon from an attacker, the poise they have in dealing with intruders, the background checks one gets to be sure one is not a loony. I'm hopeful of changing that soon, to take advantage of one of my several invitations to learn how to handle and use a handgun. Not necessarily because I want a permit to conceal and carry -- how would I know if I wanted one? -- but in order to reduce my ignorance.

Which is why I got into this business anyway. Teaching in a university is supposed to put one in the ignorance reduction business. I suggest this as an antidote to the fear that the faculty above expressed: Yes, we should learn about campus safety and what we can do to increase it, but we should also overcome the fear that is borne of our ignorance about guns. We should practice what we teach.

Labels: free speech, guns, higher education, SCSU

MN Chair in Real Estate Steve Mooney sent me a copy of his report along with the press release that surveys graduates of his program to determine conditions in the real estate industry as discussed earlier. The survey was of 141 graduates, with 42 of them having three or fewer years of experience. Here are a few interesting tables:

Table 1 – How Do You Rate the Market?

2005						2007
	Very Good	Good	Average	Poor			Very Good	Good	Average	Poor
Appraisal	14%	66%	21%	0		Appraisal	0	17%	57%	27%
Development	38%	38%	23%	0		Development	14%	57%	14%	14%
Property Management	29%	57%	10%	0		Property Management	0	38%	54%	8%
Mortgage Banker	3%	84%	13%	0		Mortgage Banker	0	12%	35%	53%
Broker	13%	80%	7%	0		Broker	0	26%	41%	33%
Assessor	7%	57%	36%	0		Assessor	0	0	73%	27%
Res-All	11%	63%	25%	0		Res-All	0	12%	37%	51%
Comm-All	19%	71%	10%	0		Comm-All	1%	23%	52%	21%

That is as telling about the movement in the market as anything we can publish. In particular for mortgage bankers, the market is grim. When asked whether the respondents see themselves in the same business five years from now, here are the percentages who said "yes".

Table 2

	2005	2007
Appraisal	93%	90%
Developer	100%	100%
Prop Mgt	76%	88%
Mortgage Banker	91%	59%
Broker	100%	92%
Assessor	100%	86%

29% of respondents see the market improving in the next 1-3 years and 13% think it will get worse. (The rest believed it would "stabilize" -- at what level? I don't know.)

Labels: economics, housing, SCSU

The announcement of Jim Bullard to lead the St. Louis Federal Reserve is a happy point for us at SCSU. He was a double major in economics and in quantitative methods and information systems from us in 1984. I remember him coming during his grad school years to SCSU to give a paper to our department -- he graduated just before I came to St. Cloud -- and I thought his research then was already outstanding. His resume is one piece of evidence I am a decent judge of talent.

He replaces longtime president William Poole, who is retiring after ten years. The St. Louis Fed has a reputation for a high-quality research program and an advocacy of price stability extending back to the 1960s. It's a big task Jim faces, and he recognizes.

As the Eighth District charts its course for the future, I plan to focus on a few key areas by building upon the St. Louis Bank's strong economic research tradition; continuing to provide world-class, relevant economic information and education; enhancing the Bank's outreach to industry and university economics programs; and gathering and disseminating information used for economic policy decisions.

Good luck and congratulations from St. Cloud!

Labels: economics, SCSU

From our administration:

For Christians, Good Friday is a significant day of religious meaning. Tomorrow is Good Friday, but it is also a normal day of classes and open offices. There will be students, faculty and staff who are using appropriate means to observe their faiths. As we are a community that supports pluralism and diversity, please respect the religious observance of those who celebrate the conclusion of Holy Week.

I don't know; it feels a bit contrived, particularly the "using appropriate means". What would constitute inappropriate means, and what should be the campus' reaction to that? And if there are inappropriate means for observing Good Friday, are there also ones for observing religious holidays of other religions? I don't know, like I said. It is well-intentioned, I'm sure. I just don't know that this is a good sign. I would not like an administrator deciding which of my Good Friday traditions are appropriate.

Meanwhile, the protest I wrote about yesterday appears to have started a conversation on campus; most people seemed to think it was simply no big deal. I did put the question of a public expression area to them on our campus discussion list -- so far, no discussion. That is assuredly NOT a good sign.

Labels: SCSU

It being after all the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and it being that I work on a college campus, I expected to see some campus protesters today. And sure enough they were there, marching about inside my building. "What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!" It was that typical nostalgia for the Sixties that the modern student learns (some dare call it "critical thinking".) Students and faculty alike mostly were annoyed by the loud chanting, which interrupted many classes. There were calls made to campus security, but I never saw an officer come over to our building. The students left within fifteen minutes at any rate.

As someone observed, we have on our campus public expression zones. When the fire-and-brimstone preacher comes to campus, he's required to stand in the zone. Nobody seems to want to hold these students to that standard. Why?

Labels: free speech, SCSU

Not affiliated with the Scholars, but Matt Barton, who teaches ENGL 432/532, Writing on the Web, has students writing a political blog. Greetings to Mr. Barton's students!

Labels: blogging, SCSU

The city of St. Cloud has decided no crime was committed by the student who had admitted to drawing a swastika on a chalkboard in a dorm (as discussed on this blog here.)

The swastika, which the student admitted drawing to “see if it would attract media attention,” is offensive but not illegal, according to a memorandum written by Assistant City Attorney Matthew Staehling. The student was identified in Staehling’s memo as an 18-year-old freshman.

The student drew the 3-inch by 3-inch swastika on a chalkboard inside Stearns Hall. Because the swastika was easily erased and didn’t require paint to conceal and didn’t cause any permanent damage to property, the incident was not criminal damage to property, Staehling wrote. The student denied any involvement in any of the other numerous acts of graffiti on campus that have been reported in the last three months.

The swastika is protected speech under the First Amendment, Staehling wrote, because the symbol doesn’t amount to “fighting words” that would be subject to a charge of disorderly conduct.

The swastika, Staehling wrote, “is protected as symbolic speech just as other offensive forms of speech are protected.”

Other uses of the swastika on campus could constitute a crime, he wrote, including the images that have had to be painted over or caused other damage to property.

The newspaper declined to publish the name of the student, but it is in the AP wire service story picked up by many other newspapers (based on the WJON reporting.) I will not repost the name here, but the link takes you to a name that would not call up an image of a rural white kid upset with diversity education. (A student is a freshman, and last year a student with that name wrestled for a Twin Cities-area high school. I assume my curious readers know Google, so finding the name and other details reported here will not be seen as private.)

City Attorney Jan Peterson was reported in the WJON piece to have said that "other recent swastika cases could be prosecuted as criminal if they meet the vandalism or "fighting words" standards." These have been the standards I have argued for from the very start. If we catch the people responsible for the "Student Cultural Center" (Multicultural Student Services, I think?) vandalism might meet that standard. The rest? We have graffiti that could be classified as vandalism or not, plus the so-far unsolved and unconfirmed report by a student of first being spat upon and then confronted with a salute that was described as one used by Nazis.

Because charges were not filed, it's unlikely the most severe penalties will be placed on the student according to the AP report. The Code of Conduct will be used, and a chalkboard swastika has to be found on this list of prohibited conducts for sanctions to apply.

Labels: SCSU

We apparently have a small number of people — perhaps students — who are behaving badly and engaging in behavior that is immature and silly, heinous and hateful, or somewhere in between. But the vast majority of our 16,900 students and our faculty and staff are decent people who come here to work or study hard and treat each other with respect. They do what people on any campus do — go to class, socialize, teach and learn.

That's our President Potter yesterday discussing the Graffiti Game at SCSU, and it's a paragraph I absolutely agree with. I also note with approval that, again, he has refrained from the phrase "hate crime", choosing instead "bias-motivated incidents" and "expressions of hate". The acts "in some cases ha[ve] been criminal activity." I still don't know that someone who has behaved immaturely or silly has expressed hate or is motivate by violence, but it's a step in the right direction.

I think, however, that the essay then takes a wrong turn. Focusing on whether the incidents are harming minority enrollment seems to me to be making the wrong argument. We have fared quite well in enrollments generally because a softening economy reduces the opportunity cost of education so that people choose to attend universities. If our enrollment had gone down, would that really have told us anything? Would the campus' reaction have been any different?

I don't think so. I think the university is simply managing its image and those paragraphs come a little too close to sounding like pandering. And to do so they made a deliberate choice:

As a community, in consultation with faculty, staff and student leaders, we have chosen to express our responses to these challenges openly and just as in-your-face as the people who have scrawled swastikas on walls where students reside and engage in activities. We’ve posted safety alerts and are working closely with St. Cloud police in investigating what in some cases has been criminal activity.

For that we have drawn attention to our campus — some of it unpleasant. We will continue to do so because, while every campus and every community grapples with these same issues, we choose to bring them out into the open and unite against the hate they represent.

Context, however, matters, as we'll see below.

When I was a junior high student I was fascinated with war. One of the ways I expressed that fascination was to draw pictures of dogfights of aircraft. I'm quite sure I put swastikas on the tail of a Messerschmitt Bf109 or a Stuka. (Warning: Clicking those links leads you to photos of aircraft sporting swastikas.) If one were teaching WW2 history here at SCSU, would it be a problem to show these photos in the classroom? I loved looking at books of aircraft in flight and combat; I had many of the Ballantine series of books on World War 2 on my shelves. Had I taken, say, the one for the Me-109 (with a full side view of the aircraft on its cover), and had it in my dorm room, would this have been a problem if, say, I was reading it in a student dorm lounge?

Suppose a student in his or her dorm who loves Mel Brooks is watching "The Producers". He leaves the door open for friends. When the dancing swastika comes on stage during "Springtime for Hitler", if a student should pass by the doorway and is offended, is the student watching the movie expressing hate? Is this a "bias-motivated incident" or an "expression of hate"?

Now instead he puts on his dorm door a poster for the movie, say, the last of the three here. (Warning: swastika on that link) Code of conduct violation? He instead puts it on the announcement board on his dorm floor for the purpose of inviting dormmates to his room for movie and popcorn. Violation?

Suppose he sketches it instead, including the swastika? Crime?

Silly and immature, perhaps. Insensitive, well, possibly. But hardly worth an effort like we've had here, hardly something for which "resistance is required." We really aren't the only campus that deals with these issues this way (take a look, for example, at Grinnell College) yet we seem also to be headed into the area of insisting on certain campus reactions as being acceptable and others not. What we really need is a discussion of where that line is, where freedom of inquiry abuts the desire of many on campus to call these swastikas disgusting. As long as the response to speech is itself speech, all well and good. But prosecuting speech is a dangerous place for a university to go; thinking through my Producers in the dorm story is a way to think about what lines are you ready to draw? Such a discussion would also have helped faculty and students understand the debate over, say, posting the cartoons of Mohammad at Century College.

The problem with President Potter's article is that it gets us no closer to understanding where that line is. There's no discussion of where free speech ends and expressions of hate begins, either in his own view or in the view of the courts (where I think the line is further in favor of free speech.) That was the better than best paragraph missing from President Potter's article and a for-now missed opportunity; I hope sometime we get to hear it.

-----

The following day (Monday), the campus paper headline reads "Whiteboard swastika vandal identified". I do not know whether drawing a swastika on a whiteboard is vandalism; who has the property right to the whiteboard would seem to be one question. You could argue it is, but that makes the swastika no different than, say, a Ron Paul sticker plastered on a whiteboard. The article says the student was identified by another student, responding to one of the many safety alerts on campus. President Potter spoke Thursday night to student government:

"This is a learning community and one of the things that's most important to us is that having identified someone who intentionally thought to hurt others through hateful expression that we not react with hate when others are identified," said President Potter on the subject.

I'm unclear on the meaning of that; I would assume that our students are intelligent enough to not seek to assault someone who draws a swastika on a whiteboard. If we are worried about this, again, why the "Resistance Required!" labels on our safety alerts?

Many have been questioning whether or not these are actual hate crimes that are being committed. President Potter said by legal definition they are in fact hate crimes. A hate crime does not require physical assault; it does require the intent to intimidate a specific individual.

"Whether it is a hate crime or a copy cat act to make fun of the administrations response it is still hurtful to the community," Said President Potter to finish discussion on the issue. "I would like student government to stand with me and the students that have been targeted and say 'we will not accept this.' It will take a leadership role to get the majority of the community to stand up for our core values for what is right."

Not every act has been a crime, as the Times article has noted, therefore not all the acts could possibly rise to a "hate crime". Some of these acts are "behavior that is immature and silly, heinous and hateful, or somewhere in between," in Potter's own words. I believe the administration knows this; perhaps the reporting here omitted something to indicate Potter drawing a more careful line between those things which are crimes and those which are free speech that a majority of the campus finds repugnant. Nor do we know at all whether the whiteboard vandal (if indeed it is vandalism) was targeting any "specific individual", which would meet Potter's definition of a hate crime. It's too soon to say why it was drawn or who was the intended audience.

I see nothing wrong with his asking the student government to help him "stand up for our core values." I'm just wondering whether "freedom of inquiry" is in the core?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

A male student has been identified as possibly drawing a swastika on a Stearns Hall bulletin board on SCSU's campus. The exact nature of the act of which the student has admitted (according to the article) is that "Shortly after 5:30 a.m. Monday, January 28, residence hall staff in Stearns Hall observed a swastika drawn on an information board posted outside a sixth floor student’s room." But he has admitted only for one case. While the police cannot yet establish if a crime was committed (we do not have an anti-swastika law like New York's) the campus is likely to move forward against the student:

St. Cloud State spokeswoman Marge Proell said the man has been linked only to the Stearns Hall incident.

In a statement issued Thursday to students and staff, St. Cloud State President Earl H. Potter III said the university will address the matter under the Student Code of Conduct.

As many as 19 such incidents have been reported to campus security since November. The university has issued eight safety alerts during that time related to the incidents.

The Student Code of Conduct calls the following a "prohibited conduct":

4. Intentionally, recklessly or negligently placing any person under mental duress or causing any person to be in fear of physical danger through verbal abuse, harassment (including repeated phone calls), sexual harassment, hazing, intimidation, threats or other conduct which threatens or endangers that person's emotional, mental or physical well-being.

The question is whether the drawing of a swastika can be reasonably seen as causing mental duress. In that sense, the repeated advertising of the graffiti and other activity may have created the expectation that a student will be protected from seeing the symbol. (I worry I might have just suggested the prosecution's strategy.) If they pursue this case, it will be one broadly watched among free speech advocates. The ACLU is already on the case:

Teresa Nelson, legal counsel for the Minnesota American Civil Liberties Union, said the line between free speech and preventing a hostile environment on a public university campus isn't always clear.

...Nelson said it's tough to know at what point controlling acts such as the recent incidents becomes censorship of people expressing opinions.

The ACLU has an older FAQ on hate speech and free speech on campus. It's worth noting Ms. Nelson's qualification of the line as depending on our being "a public university campus." I read with interest an old post by David Bernstein in which the ACLU made a case in favor of four neo-Nazis wearing swastika lapel pins into a private restaurant and being arrested when they refused to either remove the pins or leave. In that case, the restaurant owner had a legitimate private property right to ask for the pins to be hidden in order to serve the patrons. But dorms are weird in that they're public university but a place where students might expect more privacy. As I'm not a lawyer, I'm not going to speculate on how that gets solved.

We will now wait to see if the graffiti stops. If it does, there will be naturally the suspicion that the student identified may be responsible for more than the one. But it is also possible that the student is a copycat, using the press hysteria and campus angst to call attention to himself, or perhaps to make himself a First Amendment martyr. We shall see.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

It was thought by most individuals on campus that quick, forceful action on the appearance of vandals on the campus would lead to eventually good press. What we get for our efforts instead is an AP reporter running a story that reaches as far as the L.A. Times titled "Racist Displays Persist at Minn. College." (The PioneerPress at least gives us a little more credit: "Swastikas, other displays undermine St. Cloud State's efforts.") The writer dredges up our past bout with an anti-Semitism lawsuit and wonders how a court-ordered settlement that includes a state-funded Jewish Studies program could not solve the perceived problems of the campus.

The writer, Patrick Condon, is an AP writer who usually covers the Minnesota Legislature and state politics, and his writing indicates a great unfamiliarity with the personalities of SCSU. He uncritically quotes our Buster Cooper as "retired faculty", who is once again peddling his letters discouraging minority students from attending here. All to assist Condon to perpetrate a stereotype of St. Cloud and this university:

That was before a frightening six-week stretch in November and December when vandals carved or scrawled more than a dozen swastikas and other racist images on campus walls, elevators and bathroom stalls.

The spate came as a setback to this central Minnesota university, which has spent more than $1 million, thousands of hours and untold energy in recent years trying to undo its reputation as hostile toward racial and ethnic minorities, an image so entrenched that some refer to the surrounding town as "White Cloud."

Frightened, mind you, by graffiti. So what did this "Voices of Resistance" (required!) get you, President Potter? And toward what end does Condon work when he first uses the "White Cloud" smear and then reminds us of the influx of Somali immigrants?

Nor does advertising help. We noted in 2002 that all our efforts to remedy the anti-Semitism case of the time only bought us bad press. I wonder if President Potter, or any other administrator, had read those posts or former President Saigo's letters and the lack of good press we received. Perhaps then this administration would know that appeasement never buys you any peace with the drive-by media.

Yesterday's St. Cloud Times included a column by local lawyer John Reep, which noted the folly of our campus' efforts and suggests a different course of action:

We should stop reporting minor vandalism as hate crime and reserve that designation for more serious events. If we don't report, we should be able to stay off the evening news in Minneapolis.

Too late for that.

We can't control other news outlets, but our local media should be more selective in covering these stories. The continued coverage of every minor event lends credibility to that event, and actually contributes to an atmosphere of fear and intimidation that nobody wants.

Really, nobody wants this? Once again I ask, cui bono?

Labels: higher education, Media, SCSU

From our university email list over the weekend, another report on a "bias-motivated, hateful act" (not a "hate crime" this time) on our campus.

Shortly before 2:30 p.m. Thursday, January 24, 2008, University officials were alerted to the marking of a swastika and a partial swastika on an interior wall of a stairwell in Shoemaker Residence Hall.

Assuming we know the distinguishing features of a "partial swastika"... But what is really interesting is the next paragraph, which I reprint in the type used:

RESISTANCE REQUIRED!

All members of the SCSU community must respond to another hateful threat to our learning environment. Every voice of resistance is needed IMMEDIATELY. If you have seen or know anything about these acts or persons committing such acts please call Public Safety (320) 308-3333.

What "resistance"? It might be tempting to have fun with this in the sense of wearing berets and sounding like LeBeau on Hogan's Heroes, but the next word, "required", is ominous. Required by whom? What are the penalties for failing to meet this requirement? One faculty member on the campus, reacting to the comments on a letter at the St. Cloud Times this AM, suggests that this is why we need racial issues courses in the curriculum. But we already require nine "diversity credits" out of 120 needed for a bachelor's degree. If it turns out the perpetrators of this are in fact students, what's to be done? Increase the number to 12? 18? Sounds like the Racial Issues Instructor Full Employment Act of 2008.

The Resistance Required tag is inappropriate in a public safety announcement. It smacks of vigilantism. It smacks of thought control, that all of us must act from some centralized control. Once centralization happens, it becomes used by our academic left for infiltration of other forms of indoctrination. On the university's new site called "Voices of Resistance", which was to inform the campus about these incidents, we have advertising of faculty talks on Hurricane Katrina and Martin Luther King. Is it out of bounds for me to suggest that these faculty are using the incidents to further their own agendas? Is it too much to ask "cui bono?" from exhortations that "every voice of resistance is required immediately"?

Meanwhile, as of the time of this writing, I have not seen a campus safety alert on this:

A St. Cloud man was attacked and robbed by multiple suspects shortly after 6 a.m. Sunday.

The man was approached by seven to eight men while walking home from St. Cloud State University on Fifth Street South. One of the men struck him in the face, knocking him to the ground, according to police reports.

The other men began punching him while he was on the ground and one of the assailants took his laptop computer and brown book bag.

The victim escaped his attackers and contacted police, but was unable to give a description of the suspects. The victim was taken to St. Cloud Hospital and treated for injuries.

Nor has "resistance" been "required", nor has there been any calls for changes in the university curriculum like a self-defense course, let alone some consideration of allowing students concealed carry to protect themselves as they return home.

Ask again, cui bono?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

My colleague and friend Dick Andzenge has written a column for today's St. Cloud Times that takes dead-aim at the affront to free speech and educational excellence that has been the university's response to the swastikas. He politely refers to us as a unique institution, in ways that we might lead us to prefer to be more common:

First, I see a one-dimensional approach to diversity. When some people at St. Cloud State talk of prejudice, discrimination, insensitivity and related hostility, they assume that only white, Christian, heterosexual men are capable of these sentiments. To these people, diversity is the exclusive empowerment and increased opportunity for non-whites, non-Christians, non-males and non-heterosexuals.

To satisfy this approach, the university has accommodated a curriculum that differs from traditional Western academic curriculum.

Many students do not know much about Western concepts such as rationalism, enlightenment and the industrial revolution and their connections to modernity.

On the other hand, multiple courses are offered in democratic citizenship without a clear identification of its theoretical, historical, substantive content and academic value. Students are required to take sensitivity training courses, all of which focus largely on passive accommodation of protected groups.

Long time readers of SCSU Scholars are aware of the sensitivity training, of democratic citizenship and its descendants, of mandatory diversity training and the use of diversity in "strategic planning" to mean anything other than permitting students to hear fully the western canon. Will anyone admit this is a failure? No -- and Dick argues that someone should ask why.

The second approach I find unique at St. Cloud State is the focus on problem identification without acknowledgment of successes in dealing with those problems. Evaluating efforts to solve problems enables us to see which efforts work and which ones do not work. Complaints should be fully investigated, findings and actions taken by the university or the community made public.

A third unique issue at St. Cloud State is the tendency to allow dealing with complaints to become the major agenda of the university.

One would have expected that because the previous president introduced so many changes, the institution would be able to put those problems behind and allow the new president to focus on the real mission for the university.

Indeed, when current President Earl Potter arrived, I had hoped that there would be focus on academics; someone reported to me that in a meeting with local leaders this president wondered whether or not the university was in the education business or the diversity business. Perhaps others were worried about the answer he might find...

That these issues have surfaced at this moment suggests a persistent tendency to make sure that bigotry continues to be the university's main agenda.

The most recent incident, within a campus dormitory after students had left for semester break, might raise some question whether it is a group of jackals from off-campus or -- could it be? -- someone interested in making sure which business we stay in? Surely you'll say I'm just being paranoid, engaged in fantasy. And I hope you're right. Oh, Kerri Dunn says hi, and don't think it can't happen here. It did.

Based on the above, I suggest the president require a shared and inclusive definition of harassment, discrimination and abuse-related conduct to which everyone is held accountable.

I suggest further that complaints, allegations and claims are reported as such rather than as facts. Such complaints should be handed to the police for careful investigation and appropriate criminal justice interventions.

I've stated on a campus discussion email list that these acts are acts of vandalism first and foremost. They can be prosecuted that way. Because they also invade private spaces, they are criminal trespass. But the university has labeled all these acts hate crimes, which Dick finds objectionable.

Referring to anonymous bathroom graffiti as a hate crime, rather than juvenile acts of vandalism, is overreacting, which makes a mockery of real acts of hate that might occur.

Another colleague of mine shared with me a letter sent to President Potter. It makes the point of what we are setting up when we promise so much more than we can actually deliver, in a free, pluralistic society:

... I think your administration does a disservice to our students and our community when it simplifies a complicated issue, and when it assumes that all students will have the same reaction to these incidents. I read a comment of yours that some students are now afraid to be at SCSU and are thinking of leaving the university. But where will they go? Which university in this country can promise a better environment, or guarantee that similar incidents will never happen there? Not one. And, while I understand and genuinely sympathize with those students [who express hurt and fear --kb], legally their reaction has to be "reasonable." The entity that decides whether a victim's fear is reasonable is the jury, but only after all of the evidence is presented. Unless we want to be judge, jury, and executioner, we should not jump to conclusions that may or may not be supported by the actual evidence.

I think it is important for our students to understand how the law works and how the first amendment works because, ultimately, these will be used to decide the fate of the perpetrator. For all of the outrage being expressed now, how will you and the university community react if the perpetrator's conduct is adjudicated to be legally protected speech? Will you condemn the first amendment in equally harsh terms, because it rendered a result with which our community must disagree? Will you backtrack and explain that the law was always a part of the (non-existent) discourse as these events unfolded on our campus? Will you tell our students that their disappointment in the court's finding is understandable, and that you, too, are disappointed? I would hate to see our students set up for a fall -- waiting for the system to come down hard on this person who has so grievously injured our community, only to find him/her exonerated?

President Potter announced two weeks ago that there will be a forum "that will invite broad perspectives on characterizing and dealing with hate crimes, as well as provide support and information about resources to help those in our community who are feeling threatened or intimidated." There has so far been no forum planned on free speech, but never has one been more needed. To both of my colleagues, bravo.

Labels: Freedom, higher education, SCSU

Posting will be light the rest of the week, as I am going to New Orleans for the ASSA meetings to interview (yet again) for a position in our department. I've posted some ideas in the past on this, and stole John Palmer's idea last year, and similarly-situated John Whitehead has some other tips for interviewees. This is the sixth year out of seven I've spent a January weekend in a hotel interviewing (and if you're interested, yes, we've hired each time ... we're that young.)

If you're interviewing with us, you're allowed to say you read this blog.

Labels: economics, SCSU

So another biennium begins in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, and the first semester ends without the faculty having finalized a contract with the system. Some faculty walk around with buttons that indicate their salary demands (about 15% increase over the two years). Word around the campus is that if we get even remotely that amount, the schools do not have enough money to pay those salaries and so there will have to be cutbacks.

The union -- the Inter-Faculty Organization -- delves into the details and discovers one reason why the money might not be there:

At the last MnSCU Board of Trustees’ meeting MnSCU officials revealed a little more detail than has been supplied in the past on how they plan to spend the $62.8 million increase in technology money this year. MnSCU is increasing expenditures on technology from $21,500,000 in FY2007 (last year) to $46,355,000 million this year—a 115% increase in one year. They are proposing an additional $4.7 million increase in system level technology expenditures next fiscal year. MnSCU currently has 140 system level technology positions, 20 of which are vacant. They are proposing to add an additional 55 new technology positions.

MnSCU received essentially block grants from the legislature of $666.8 million in FY2008 (this year) and $689.3 million in FY2009. The biennial increase in appropriations was 12.6%. The increase in appropriations this year to the MnSCU system as a whole was 10.6% The increase in appropriations sent out to the campuses by MnSCU was only 3.3%.

Faculty have complained that MnSCU is spending too much money on central office growth, particularly on system level technology, and not sending enough of the state appropriation out to the campuses, where education takes place. The amount of money MnSCU is spending on “Systemwide Set-Asides” is increasing from $58.9 million in FY2007 to $85.8 million in FY2008 (a 45.6% increase) and to $90.8 million in FY2009 (another 5.8% increase). At the last IFO Budget Committee meeting, Tom Fauchald, Budget Committee Chair, presented an analysis of the growth in state appropriations from MnSCU to the state universities as a percent of the university operating budgets. Here is the biennial growth by university:

Bemidji	2.50%
Metro	2.92%
Moorhead	2.18%
Mankato	2.71%
Southwest	1.93%
St. Cloud	2.62%
Winona	3.20%

The data is easily available by reading through the system's budget documents. While I have plenty of beefs with the union, they have exposed a very important problem in the system.

When this was discussed at the town hall in Waite Park, most of the suggestions focused on why do we have a system office, and what does it provide? Why would a system office need to suck up almost a sixth of the state's appropriation? Why do we have a huge St. Paul office with more employees than any of the colleges and universities in the system save two? Is it really more efficient and better for SCSU that it is a system board of trustees in St. Paul that hired President Potter to our campus last summer, rather than a St. Cloud board of trustees? If there was, wouldn't that board provide the resources he would need to pay the salaries he was negotiating? You certainly would not get this situation where the state appropriates 12% more money to the system, but only 3% reaches the place where the students are.

It's a strange world, this MnSCU. I got the impression that more scrutiny of this spending pattern might come from legislators. It's long overdue.

Labels: legislature, SCSU

James Lileks, a couple of hours ago on the story:

When I was at the U it was rare to find a bathroom stall that didn’t have a swastika, or some other piece of moron-spoor. The reaction then? Usually someone wrote a profane rejoinder with a Sharpie. Today:

“As campus officials and police look for those responsible, (university President) Potter said conversation might be the key to ending the crimes. In recent weeks, the school has increased security, created a team to evaluate each case, held training for faculty members to help them find ways to process the incidents in their classes, and reached out to the city's mayor in efforts to get conversation going and to talk about how to deal with hatred and bigotry.”

I suspect there’s one fellow behind this, loving every minute.

When I have tried to say this, or make any mention of the First Amendment -- it doesn't protect a vandal, but it might protect someone reading Mein Kampf in front of Atwood (oh, wait, that's not a public expression area) -- I have been pretty routinely shouted down. A message to the campus from the provost yesterday noted these "reprehensible and cowardly acts "threaten the safety and sense of security of many of our students. Several students are so upset that they are considering transferring to another university." I have to wonder what kind of education we provide here where a student asks mom and dad to let them transfer when they see a carved swastika (or, new this week, a drawing of a burning cross including the letters 'KKK') and not get out their best Roman Maroni voice and mutter "Fargin iceholes." Every escalation of response on the campus has led to new acts. As a very wise man said in response to that message yesterday, "at some point withholding the attention such petty thugs crave is the only way to starve their self-obsession. While we must take every such act seriously, we dare not become distracted by their acts of "terror", because that is exactly what such bigots seek."

And for those that can't here, free Sharpies to the first ten commenters.

Labels: SCSU

Students at Friends for Life, a group that advocates for pro-life positions, received a letter from another student group called Out Loud, a group "that takes a stand against homophobia and heterosexism." The letter invited them to participate in an event called the Real Real World, an event I find described from a 2004 newsletter of our Social Responsibility program as

...an interactive program that addresses and exposes oppression on an everyday level as well as a larger level. This is mostly portrayed through visual and auditory media, where students take a tour through the life of different populations who face oppression on a regular basis.

A newsletter from this spring for students to find volunteering opportunities on campus describes Real, Real World as

a campus event ... that showcases displays on anti-Semitism, heterosexism, sexism, body image, racism and empowerment.

FfL felt it should present a booth for an oppressed group: the unborn. Its leader, David Brix, then reports to me that he received a call from Out Loud's faculty advisor, who is the interim director of the campus' GLBT Services office. While never explicitly told that FfL could not participate, Brix says he was told that the group's proposed presentation "would probably not fit with the theme of the real real world as her group is about women's progress not about restricting what they can and can not do with their bodies. " (His quote, not the advisor's.) Brix concluded from the conversation that any further discussion would not result in FfL getting the make their presentation.

Perhaps the descriptions of the event that I have are not accurate. In this case, perhaps Out Loud would like to provide a more accurate description of its program. But even then we have a coordinated event created by something paid for by state dollars, to which a student group is discouraged from participation based on viewpoint. One can only imagine what might happen on a university campus if a group created a public presentation called "Real, Real Fetuses".

Labels: higher education, SCSU

In today's StarTribune, Katherine Kersten describes a case of campus "making an example" of a student who made a flip joke. A student at the MCTC campus newspaper jokes about missed deadlines by creating a noose out of his sweatshirt drawstring, hangs it with a note of mock warning, and then removes it before leaving the newspaper's office. Within days, he is fired.

At a meeting set up by college authorities, he apologized profusely to staffers. He called the noose joke "unprofessional" but explained that it was a misunderstanding.

"Too late," one student responded, said Keith. "The staffer told me, 'An example needs to be made. We need to raise awareness of issues like this on campus.'

"They didn't want an apology," Keith added. "They wanted me out of there so they could launch the aftermath."

Not the student's best moment; it's a tasteless joke. But one could hardly have said he was singly out black student reporters for the noose. That did not matter.

"We are angry," Lisa Dean, president of Association of Black Collegiates, a student group, told the Star Tribune for an article about the incident. "If we do not nip it in the bud, it will spread and a lot of students may not want to attend this college because of racism."

At the P.C. circus' surreal climax, Keith unknowingly walked into a protest rally where a crowd vented outrage at his bigotr. Meanwhile, administrators scrambled to use the incident as a "chance to educate our students."

Educate about what? You guessed it: "We want to educate around cultural understanding," Laura Fedock, interim associate vice president for academic and student affairs, told the Star Tribune. "We need to teach each other when something is offensive."

Kersten wonders if students learn anything else. But she then gets to the heart of the matter:

The thinly veiled secret is that an incident like this is a godsend to campus political posturers and must be milked for all it's worth.

Today, a favorite college pastime is fanning the flames of grievance. Victimhood is a tremendous source of moral power, and being outraged and oppressed is a sure bet to get your picture in the paper -- displaying a look of grave concern for all humanity.

On the St. Cloud State campus last week, some muttonhead scratched swastikas in our student union building. One was in the muticultural office, found last Tuesday. It's unlikely we'll ever figure out who did it. But this doesn't prevent one administrator of saying we will "come together as a community and develop a plan."

For what? If the perpetrator(s) are not on this campus, what good does it do? Because it gives the political posturers not only a photo op but power, power to impose a particular view of race. One member of the campus sent around a statement on the use of swastikas which concluded with this sentence:

While what might be thoughtless provocation should not be criminalized to an extent beyond room for education and socialization, hate crimes must be identified as such and condemned and persecuted.

The contradiction within that very sentence -- don't criminalize, but persecute -- is a shining example of the problem with the definition of hate crimes. (So too an exhortation at the bottom of his flyer advertising a public forum which says "Zero tolerance for undemocratic statements." In bold and underlined, just in case you might miss that.) At both these schools, statements of "zero tolerance" make it more difficult to have these conversations in the open.

Not that the posturers really care.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This article from our campus newspaper is fairly persuasive that a room to allow Muslim students the opportunity to wash their feet before prayers is less controversial than it seems. The front page of the print edition has a very large picture of a student washing his feet, but the reporting inside is thorough in making the point that there is equal accommodation of all religions. The foot sink was installed in the student union -- not a state building, technically -- in 2004, though accommodations have been made since 2001.

"The purpose of our building is to serve student organizations, and as part of freedom of religion, students have the ability to create their own student organizations based upon religious tenants," [Ed Bouffard, Atwood Center director] said. "Our function is to serve the group, not to serve the religion. And if their group gathers around a particular context, that is their choice, and we serve those groups."

"One of the big issues has been unfair treatment of Christian groups relevant to Muslim groups," he said. "Sometimes people frame it as, 'well gee, you are catering to Muslim students, and Christians can't do that.' Well in the case of the foot sink, it is done for safety. They don't pray in that room, they wash their feet in that room, and that is a cultural difference. I think here we certainly serve both groups."

Bouffard said about 12 Christian groups use Atwood's facilities, and in 2006, Christian groups made 454 building reservations compared to 55 for Muslim groups.

A Christian organization also recently conducted a 24-hour prayer room, and Bouffard said Native American students have sometimes requested to burn sage to cleanse rooms. In those cases, fire alarms were temporarily turned off to allow the burning. Certain Pagan and Wiccan groups also meet in Atwood regularly.

It's a pretty compelling case Ed makes. One question, on equal accommodation, seems to be cared to by the numbers on number of Christian building reservations (those can be anything from a booth to hand out circulars to advertise to a prayer group.) The other, state funds, is met by the use of a student union paid for from activity fees. I'm a little uncomfortable with that, as students don't really have a choice on paying for it (short of not attending a public university.) But I don't know that this is a major objection.

Anyway, compliments to the reporter who wrote this piece, Chad Eldred. It was very informative.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Dani Rodrik comments today:

"In the 2006-7 school year ... international students’ net contribution to the United States economy was nearly $14.5 billion," reports the New York Times, citing a just-released study by the Institute of International Education. The IIE report itself states: "International students contribute approximately $14.5 billion dollars to the U.S. economy, through their expenditure on tuition and living expenses." Apparently, two-thirds of this spending is financed by students' own families and their home governments.

As anyone with a modicum of economics training should understand, this number represents a net contribution to the U.S. economy only in the absurd limiting case in which the opportunity cost of resources used in providing U.S. education services to foreign students is ZERO. I bet my Dean at Harvard--which is ranked #9 among top hosts of foreign students--can vouch that he pays me real money.

I've heard people in Minnesota say that we spend too much on educating international students here at SCSU and not enough on education for Minnesotans. I've thought about this, "does it cost us more to educate an international student than a Minnesotan?" Most schools, ours included, make a good bit of money selling English language courses to international students who don't speak English well enough when they come to our university to succeed in classes. (These are separate programs, which may or may not include students counting in our international student body.) Those of course use real resources, and it's appropriate to ask what are the opportunity costs.

As to what international students pay, here's their fee schedule, and here's the tuition and fee schedule for the university. Notice the line in the former marked "Academic & Cultural Sharing
Scholarship". This money goes to every international student regardless of the cultural sharing they will do, whether we already have 200 students from that culture, etc. The size of that scholarship is exactly equal to the difference between the non-resident and Minnesota tuition rates.

If it costs more to educate an international student than a Minnesotan, that becomes a net subsidy. Even if it does not, if an international student crowds out a domestic student, one can argue that we are subsidizing. Now SCSU does use as its current marketing logo "What's Your World?" So one can argue as well that we are subsidizing international students so that Minnesota students experience global exposure. But we admit 1000 international students to a campus with headcount under 17,000. When do diminishing returns set in? Is this a cost-effective way to provide Minnesotans with a global education?

Labels: economics, higher education, Minnesota, SCSU

Mrs. Scholar's monthly column in the Times is up, about the Columbia speech by Ahmadinejad. Her takeaway: "What does it take to prepare a student to talk to a dictator?" and can you learn that at Columbia? Or St. Cloud State?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

A group of students on campus organizes themselves as "Friends for Life", with the purpose of educating students about the costs of abortion. They are able to obtain funding towards that mission and have inserts they wish to place in the campus newspaper, and so they approach the newspaper to buy the right to include them. The inserts were refused last year and again this year. The story next is unedited except to remove the name of the editor at the newspaper, and was mailed to me by David Brix, who leads Friends for Life. In his words:

In the past, the group had been granted permission by the paper and the literature was run with no complications. However, the next year the very same insert was rejected with no reasons given by the paper. Answers as to why were refused to FFL members despite the fact that FFL is a paying client of The Chronicle.

This year FFL tried again, but with a new insert; however, that too was rejected. The reason the insert was rejected was because it was considered too graphic for a college audience. The problem with the denial is the inconsistency of The Chronicle. On Thursday September 20, the paper had run an insert of a provocative looking underwear model in volume 84 number 5. Many found this image to be graphic and offensive; but, it was considered acceptable for college students to see.

Both images are graphic. To be sure you agree to see them, I've uploaded them separately and provide a link to the Armani Exchange and the Human Life Alliance (HLA) photos. I have copies of both of the HLA inserts that were rejected, as well as the Armani insert.

Brix also relates an exchange with an editor (whose name and phone number I am redacting, I'll explain why in a moment):

Last Thursday I brought the HLA insert down to the Chronicle office and gave it to [an editor]. She told me that usually anything is appropriate but they have to take a look at political based ads. She told me she would have to check with the editor. She called me back that afternoon and left me this voice mail:

“Hi David, this is [redacted] from the University Chronicle…a…replying about the inserts for Friends for Life. I showed it to our editor and we are not going to be able to run this, some of the pictures are just too graphic and… that’s just kind of how…just kind of…how we do things. So if you have any questions please feel free to call me back the number here is 320-308-nnnn. Thanks, bye”.

Now go back and look at the pictures. The picture the editor refused is certainly graphic. It is meant to provoke, to raise one's emotions, in order to make a political point. The other picture, the Armani picture, is meant to provoke, to raise one's emotions, to make a commercial point. Ask yourself: Which kind of provocative speech is the First Amendment intended to protect?

Understand too, that nobody -- not the Friends for Life group, nor me -- would ask the Chronicle to censor the Armani ad.

The Chronicle has of course run ads before that have been provocative and political. It ran a scurrilous article attacking a member of the faculty and former dean, promised to investigate its failure to research it properly, and then ran away from the research when it was apparent the paper would end up not looking good. It is not beyond running a cartoon praising a male Homecoming Queen. The paper once included an insert from a person who wanted to provoke a reaction by denying the Holocaust. Perhaps that experience so affected the paper and its adviser that now they are checking anything not clearly commercial for content. Yet when it makes a point that might be politically correct, like supporting the Homecoming Queen, or commercially expedient, like taking money for a commercial ad, they aren't checking. Notice again what Brix said:

She told me that usually anything is appropriate but they have to take a look at political based ads. She told me she would have to check with the editor.

This is inimical to a free press, and it is inimical to a campus newspaper in a university (and advised by a department) that trumpets its commitment to the First Amendment.

I do not blame that particular editor for the rejection of the HLA ad -- which is why I do not want to name her or give out a phone number. And turnover at a campus newspaper is quite high, of course, since students graduate, so the current staff cannot be held responsible for any of the other problems I've named for the Chronicle. You have to look for the one constant.

Labels: Freedom, higher education, SCSU

Dani Rodrik has tried to determine if there's much of a relationship between economists who blog and those who are doing good, useful research in economics. The short answer is that the relationship is positive but only because the top ten economist-bloggers include three U. Chicago bloggers (Levitt, Posner and Becker), the very prolific Brad DeLong, and a passel of George Mason economists (is a blog required for tenure there?). Take those out, he says, and the relationship pretty much disappears.

Somehow this blog, #20 on Aaron Schiff's list, didn't make Rodrik's sample. I doubt I'd have changed the correlation, but for the sake of completeness, here's my Google Scholar page. I don't know what he used for the ranking of citations, but my guess is I am a little below the median of the group.

Labels: economics, higher education, SCSU

I read this this morning, but I've been trying to get some writing and coding done today so I saved it for now. I have never met Prof. Pekarek, but it would be my pleasure.

For the past 12 years, Pekarek has read everything he can find about climate change.

His conclusion — that the Earth has been getting warmer, but humans aren't causing it — puts him at odds with mainstream public opinion and much of the scientific community.

None of that seems to faze Pekarek, who keeps a sign in his office that reads, "Geologists own climate history."

Just because there appears to be a consensus among scientists that humans are causing climate change by producing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide doesn't make it true, Pekarek said. Four hundred years ago, there was a consensus that the Earth was flat, he said.

"Climate is a very complex system, and anyone who claims we know all there is to know about it, let's say, is charitably misinformed or chooses to be," Pekarek said. "We fool ourselves if we think we have a sufficiently well-understood model of the climate that we can really predict. We can't."

What's nice about his alternative explanation is it's falsifiable:

Pekarek's theory is that the warming effect is caused by solar activity such as sun spots, which affect cloud cover. Pekarek believes solar activity is decreasing and the Earth will enter a cooling period within the next few years — even if humans keep pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

"That's the grand experiment," he said. "Give me five or 10 years and I'll have the answer."

Steve Conover reminds us that Galileo withstood great pressure from politicians and priests (the learned men of the times) before being proven right.

Scientific truths are not determined by a show of hands. If that were not the case, we'd never have heard of Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, Einstein—or much of the contemporary evidence on the other side of the AGW debate, now begging for a hearing.

Hooray for Prof. Pekarek, a real SCSU scholar.

Labels: global warming, SCSU

I had missed this article -- I've been out of town many Sundays lately -- but Andy Barnett points out a local article on SCSU's recruiting efforts to bring in more students of color.

Andy thinks we are "promoting one race over another race." I would say, perhaps. But we live in a time when finding the traditional 18-year-old student from the usual parts of Minnesota and the Dakotas (and a few Wisconsinites) is much harder. Drive along a freeway in the Twin Cities and look at the signs for universities and how far away they are. SCSU has some of those, but there are some from the Dakota state schools. Over the next ten years the number of 15-19 year olds in the state will fall by 29,200, according to State Demographic Center estimates. So too North Dakota.

If you are trying to maintain student population, then, you must recruit harder, and reach into pockets of youth that are traditionally not in the pool of students we reach. Thus I think the efforts of recruiting minority and immigrant populations are probably for the best. The alternative is to lower admission standards, or downsize. The first is clearly wrong; I might argue to downsize instead, but impetus for that is most likely to come from outside the system.

Labels: higher education, Minnesota, SCSU

That's what The Examiner wants to know.

Here are the earmarks identified for Minnesota, which total $7,155,000. Check out the earmarks for your state and then call your congressman and ask if he or she sponsored any of your state's earmarks. If the answer is yes, ask why the congressman's name isn't on the earmark. If you recognize the institution designated to receive the earmarked tax dollars, call them and ask them what they intend to do with your money.

There's one for the other states, so if you're not in MN there's a list for you. On this list is $400.000 for "St. Cloud State University for the Science Initiative of Central Minnesota for curriculum development." That would be this organization, which has helped our university create a new masters in regulatory affairs; that's right, you can get a masters degree in how to navigate the Federal regulatory system to get your medical device to market. Bureaucracy has created a new field of study.

I am inquiring to see who our benefactor is and have dropped a note to . Who knows? We might throw them a party! I'll let you know if I get any response.

Labels: earmarks, higher education, SCSU

After talking with a colleague, I've decided the only thing wrong with Dick Andzenge's editorial today is that it didn't kick enough ass. Speaking of outgoing president Roy Saigo,

Because it does not have its own board, the university cannot articulate its vision and define its mission independent of other institutions in the system. This makes it hard for a president to develop a clear vision and move toward it.

Rather than attempt a forward-looking vision, Saigo chose to confront the perceived bigotry and perceived conflicts at the university. Unfortunately, focusing only on problems creates an image and a perception that the institution cannot appreciate its positive qualities.

Dick has identified a key problem: When things become disorganized (may I use the word 'malorganized' to describe deliberate disruptions of the university's organization), there is no board of outsiders you can speak to. Perhaps one reason Saigo faced so many lawsuits on this campus is the lack of this release valve, of having an independent group of leaders solely focused on the health of this university, rather than the promotion of the personal goals of someone in St. Paul.

Dick cites one example:

Many administrative tasks have gradually fallen under the purview of faculty who routinely frustrate the efforts of nonfaculty people assigned to work in those areas. Many administrative and even faculty positions have become very difficult to fill because of wrangling over the power of search committees and benefits extended to administrative ranks.

The Faculty Association does not quibble over the ranks and tenure conditions of faculty hires, which are made by deans, but vehemently opposes the granting of tenure to administrative hires, even when those people being considered had already earned tenure at similar or better ranked universities.

This happens, although the association knows that extending tenure to incoming senior administrators improves the quality candidates.

I.e., people who want to be deans here routinely are denied the ability to obtain tenure. Administrators don't want to have deans with loyalties to anyone but the president; the union does not know how to deal with supervisors as union members who supervise other union members, and it can't see how anyone who is faculty would not be a member of the union. The union has been caught in thinking of itself in industrial terms rather than professional terms for years, and it cannot escape it. Indeed, by having a president that has focused only on problems, the union has been strengthened and emboldened. It has had something to agitate against. Dick correctly identifies that as a problem.

After many of years of focusing on all that is wrong and bad at the university, I hope the new president will help us to see the university as place with hope and possibilities and lead us in discovering and identifying with those.

To move forward, the president must be able to challenge faculty to focus on academics and leave administration to those hired to do it.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Our president retired Saturday (sort of, he will still work for MnSCU helping other schools set up international programs.) You wouldn't have to search much here to find my criticisms of his seven years on the campus. His exit has been somewhat more gracious than most of time, though, and there's a quote in the story that struck me as dead on.

"He had a more casual attitude and was more comfortable as the average guy than as president," Prout [Sue, Saigo's executive assistant] said. "He feels more comfortable being one of the guys than being the suited president standing up addressing a crowd in a formal address."

I recall him in academic regalia and thinking "he doesn't seem to like wearing that stuff," yet he seemed to want the display of pomp (for example, he was formally installed as president via a ceremony.) I found him at his most comfortable wandering into lunch alone and sitting with whomever he thought might want to chat. Formal speaking, I'd argue, was not his long suit.

I'm glad the article focused on his work on international programs; it really has been the one good thing he's done here that I hope lasts past his term.

Get to meet the new guy this morning. Let's see what his first impression is like...

Labels: higher education, SCSU

On Saturday's show, we did a rather obscure story that I'd like to review now and provide some background.

A seat is available on the MnSCU Board of Trustees for a student from one of the four-year universities in the system (one of which is SCSU.) The current holder, Michael Boulton, goes off on June 30.

Chapter 136F of the Minnesota Statutes governs MnSCU and specific provisions are provided for the selection of trustees. 136F.04 covers the student board members' selection, assigning them "the responsibility for recruiting, screening, and recommending qualified candidates" to the board. They can recommend between two to four. The statute explicitly states that the governor "is not bound by these recommendations." The student association covering the four-year universities is the Minnesota State University Student Association (MSUSA.)

During the show we reviewed first the case of Luke Hellier. Luke is a graduate of St. John's University, has been active in Republican politics both on and off the campus, and has experience in SJU student government. I met him while he was at SJU and active with Students Fostering Conservative Thought; I have spoken as well to the campus' College Republicans chapter. Luke says he is enrolled for classes this fall at MSU-Mankato for a masters degree in public administration. He tells that upon speaking with Boulton, and realizing he met the requirements for the position, he decided to apply for the post. Using the Open Appointments process meant he filled out a form. He reports that last week, he was interviewed for the position. Nothing on that form indicated to him that he should speak to MSUSA for screening, nor did anyone from the governor's office when they interviewed him.

We also interviewed Adam Weigold, a candidate who went through MSUSA screening. When I asked how he knew of the post opening, he reported that as someone affiliated with MSUSA he was aware of the process anyway. How was the position advertised? I asked. He replied that it was up to campus student government presidents to make the position known to people on their campuses. While Adam was very supportive of Luke's candidacy, he felt that Luke should have known this process by finding the statute.

That's a fair enough point. But what I would ask is, when the statute says (136F.02) that "Three members must be students who are enrolled at least half time in a degree, diploma, or certificate program or have graduated from an institution governed by the board within one year of the date of appointment." (emphasis added), it clearly contemplates the applicant pool to include a student entering school. Nobody disputes this. And this would appear to be the case: The entering student would be a graduate student coming to a MnSCU school. We do not offer doctorates (yet) and master's programs typically take two years. So it's most likely that if grad students are contemplated to join the board, they would most likely join it at the very beginning of their enrollment in a program. Without the provision I italicized, it is unlikely that graduate students could gain the 4-year student seat on the MnSCU board.

Yet the system by which MSUSA announces the process it uses is exclusionary to those who would enter a program a few months after the announcement of a vacancy. It puts candidates like Luke at a disadvantage to insiders within MSUSA and the seven campus student governments.

If you think that's fair -- that there should be preference for current over incoming students, even if the incoming student has experience in student government from a non-MnSCU school -- you're welcome to argue that point. Please indicate how you read that into current Minnesota statute.

Enter last week's folderol from the leftist blogs inspired by Hal Kimball. Long-time readers of the Scholars are familiar with Mr. Kimball. He is a past student government president. During his tenure his student government helped get a man elected homecoming queen, interfering enough with the campus' student finances that its student finance committee quit en masse, and causing enough ruckus with the student newspaper to have its editor make Kimball the focus of his valedictory editorial, including these famous words:

Kimball is a whiny, two-faced, corrupt liar- all of the personality traits of a politician. He probably has a good career ahead of him.

The career path was rather evident early on. The year before Kimball became president of the student government, SCSU's students voted to remove themselves from MSUSA. To do so requires legislation, so the vote was to bind student government to seek that legislation. Throughout early 2004 the debate raged, and when Kimball won election that April, he indicated he would still abide by the students' preferences.

Kimball and [VP Bianca] Rhodes [who also tried to quit as Kimball's VP during the finance flap in 2/05 but was persuaded to stay] intend to keep the pressure on, they said.

"We will still be working on the MSUSA issue," Rhodes said. "That is very important to the students and student government."

But in the greatest about-face since Gomer Pyle, Kimball not only does not press for SCSU's departure from MSUSA, he becomes its chair. In a scathing editorial of Kimball's tenure, the campus newspaper notes that this is "similar to President Bush becoming the head of the United Nations after his term."

So those who think I might have been a little over-the-top last Saturday on my show should review this fellow who you have followed into your calumny over Luke Hellier's legitimate candidacy for the MnSCU Board. Is it really about protecting the recommending authority of MSUSA -- a body that Hal Kimball has both said he wanted SCSU students out of, and then became chair of -- or is it in fact about the politics of Luke?

After reading the facts above, and reading Hal's post, you decide: Does this look like the post of a 35-year-old adult that should serve on a board of MnSCU to you?

UPDATE: Michael looks at the reporting and finds it lacking.

UPDATE 2 (10pm): Since some people are missing key points, let's review again:

1. I don't really care if Mr. Hellier wins or loses the Board seat. I think he is qualified, but it is reasonable to assume all three candidates are. Having not interviewed one and having only talked briefly to the other two, I'm in no position to pick. Nor is that my job: It's Governor Pawlenty's.
2. Mr. Kimball is not a student at SCSU at this time. Having left the university, he is not subject to any special consideration from me as a faculty member. I checked this before agreeing to do the story on the show by establishing he no longer had an email account at the university. He has never been in one of my classes and his resume indicates he left the university in 2006.
3. Reporting on his past at the university goes to motive. Mr. Kimball is a political actor in this issue; the post I offered of his above shows a political argument disqualifying his contention that the issue is about the MSUSA recommendation. Even in his questions he would ask of Mr. Hellier, he makes Hellier's work with the Bachmann campaign an issue. There is no political qualifications or disqualifications for a Board position. And his inconsistent position on MSUSA ("it's not your daddy's MSUSA") should call his judgment on the MSUSA recommendation into question. The target of his post is not Hellier but Pawlenty, and his willingness to smear Hellier with misrepresentations to get at Pawlenty is in fact part of a pattern of behavior.
   
4. We are grateful for the listenership of the leftist blogs to our show. We are glad you found it entertaining. That is, in fact, what we do. We both inform and entertain. If leftists could figure this out, maybe they'd draw more than a 9% share of the talk radio format.

Labels: AM1280, higher education, Minnesota, NARN, Northern Alliance Radio Network, politics, SCSU

...is on safety at SCSU after Virginia Tech. Some people think our gun rules allow visitors to have guns on campus, but that's not true. Here's the policy. Mrs. S argues that we as a campus don't spend enough on safety. I did not know the data (here's the university's budget detail, look at page 49 or scan for "public safety") before she asked the question. I found it by far the most interesting piece she has done so far!

Labels: SCSU

Several posts by others today on the StarTribune's defense of Minneapolis Community and Technical College's purchase of foot-bathing facilities for its Muslim students. See for example PowerLine. Mitch asks a very good question hypothetically of MCTC's administration:

Since washing feet - the feet of others, in this case - has a tradition in Christianity that was practiced by Christ himself, I’m wondering; would I, a Christian, be able to wash feet in this foot bath (following Christ’s example, I’d be washing the feet of others rather than my own - a typically-Christian model of self-abnegation, if you know what I mean)?

I suspect I know the answer, and there'd be a way for MCTC to differentiate re-enactment of the Last Supper, an annual event, with the five-times-daily washing required of observant Muslims. So perhaps Christians would get access only on Maundy Thursday. To be frank, that'd be enough for me.

But the part that I've been wondering about is in the STrib editorial,

If MCTC were setting some unusual precedent, we might worry. But it's not. St. Cloud State University, the University of Minnesota-Duluth and at least a dozen other colleges around the country have installed small foot-washing facilities for their devout Muslim students -- at modest cost and often using student fees rather than state revenues.

If student activity fees were purely voluntary payments, distributed democratically by a student government, I might agree with the distinction the editors make. But this is a false dichotomy. It takes as little as 7% of the student body to impose fees, and student government elections are typically with less participation than that. After voting a fee, the university takes the money from students and deposits it into an account for them. So the state is involved in enforcing the fee, and the university does have oversight. I think the distinction between student fees and state revenues is less than one would believe.

At SCSU, there are Friday prayers for Muslims in the student union; it is my assumption that to do so requires the washing of feet, and perhaps a facility is provided. It's not clear to me if it is provided by the Muslim Students Association, or the Arab Students Association, or by student government more generally. There are 17 student organizations on campus that are religious, most of them Christian. The question of who paid for the washing basin is not terribly important. That it's just a few dollars, and it comes only from student activity fees, doesn't help us understand the lack of equal access to religious practice on our campuses. The question worth asking, like Mitch does, is whether each enjoy equal access to the fees collected by the state on behalf of a student government that would not pass the test of being representative even if you had Jimmy Carter judging them. I have not heard any reports like this, so I assume nothing has happened, but I do not know. (If you are an SCSU student with an opinion on this and wish to remain anonymous, drop an email at comments-at-scsuscholars-dot-com)

It's not an idle question. FIRE has a list of cases in its past that cover religious liberty on college campuses. Most, though not all -- LSU once tried to not recognize a Muslim student group because it had the requirement that its members be Muslim -- have pointed at restrictions on freedom of religious expression of Christianity. It is that backdrop that causes questions to arise when we find dollars spent on public university campuses in support of religious practices of others.

Labels: higher education, Minnesota, SCSU

Reading Mary Eberstadt's article about left-wing bias on college campuses reminded me of a story I told a couple of years ago here. I am fortunate that I work in a department where my politics do not stand out as different, because there are a number of people who are conservative here as well as liberal. (Indeed, in the past six years in hiring seven new faculty members, not only have we hired a healthy mix but in two cases I completely missed on my guess of the other's politics -- one in each direction!) But the case I made then remains: A conservative who is accepted on a college campus tends to be treated as a token of the Left's self-perceived "openness".

The students, however, recognize it. Eberstadt's new book, Why I Turned Right, makes the case that famous conservatives become that way after starting out in school as liberal (David Brooks argues that they do it to be cool, to affect a superior attitude to the perceived ignorance of the Right.) That may well be true at more elite institutions. At SCSU, however, a majority of students I see know who the professors are who are putting their political views on display in the classroom, and surprisingly it's not working: On a campus where 90% or more of the faculty are Democrat, a new SCSU Survey of students says only 36% self-identify as Democrat, to 26% Republican.

Johnathan Chait pooh-poohs Eberstadt's collection of stories, likening the conversions of the David Horowitzes and Heather MacDonalds as like joining a cult. He is right insofar as those who publish as leading voices of the new Right tend to be people who knew how to be leading voices of the Left. But focusing on the few in Eberstadt's book misses a broad swath of students at non-elite schools, educated by the second- and third-rate liberals from more elite schools (who alternatively pray for their deliverance from a conservative Midwestern hell and curse the fates), who shrug, chug a beer, and head off to middle class jobs feeling like they are the ones delivered. Indeed, as a number of us were discussing over lunch today, the increased use of two-year schools as feeders for the state university system is just the thing to allow our students to avoid the grips of the displaced, dispossessed leftist's general education course.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Apparently MnSCU doesn't believe in performance pay. The contract of our new president Earl Potter has been published by the St. Cloud Times. His base salary of $220,000 is the headline of the newspaper today. Of interest is clause 8(E):

E. Performance Incentive
The president shall receive an annual payment based on performance at the completion of each year of this Agreement, if the President meets or exceeds the performance expectations determined by the Chancellor. The Chancellor shall make a determination by August 31st of each year for the prior fiscal year. If the Chancellor does not make a determination prior to August 31st, the performance incentive shall be deemed to be awarded and the payment shall be made. A performance payment under this paragraph shall be made within two (2) months after the determination by the Chancellor, or by October 31st, whichever is earlier. The amount of the payment shall be two thousand dollars ($2,000).

Wow, a guy making 220k, plus housing, car and telephone, can get a bonus of 2k if he "meets or exceeds the performance expectations." That should really incentivize him to perform! And it requires a negative finding by the Chancellor to deny the money, rather than a positive finding to pay. Now THAT'S motivation.

At less money than outgoing president Roy Saigo and about a fourth of Gopher football coach Tim Brewster, one wonders if we were looking for a leader or a bargain. (Tubby Smith at $1.7 million/year is a different matter.)

Labels: SCSU

Comments about the quality of the St. Cloud Times interactive bracket (and the quality of St. Cloud hockey fans) are small salve for the guy who had to tolerate Rick Barnes and D.J. Augustin blowing up his NCAA brackets. (By the way, I actually saw Danny Ainge sitting with Kevin Durant's family, for which Ainge now owes the NBA $30,000. If we sign Durant, Danny should be compensated.)

I obviously know nothing about hockey (the parenthetic note above should be proof of which sport I follow) but I will say that the team goes as far as the goalie takes them. Having had Bobby Goepfert and Nate Raduns both as students, I can say firmly that if they're as good hockey players as they are students and young men, we're in good shape. Nate, by the way, is up for the Lowe's Senior CLASS Award -- Celebrating Loyalty and Achievement for Staying in School -- so how 'bout everyone go vote for him? Notice: no Gophers on that list.

I also know we beat Clarkson twice, here, early in the season, and Maine is experiencing the same late-season swoon we are. So if we can get Bobby rested up and the offense actually getting shots on goal again, it's possible to see SCSU in the Frozen Four.

But again, I know nothing about hockey. Just waiting for Durant and baseball...

Labels: SCSU, sports

Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Chancellor James H. McCormick said today he will recommend that the Board of Trustees appoint Earl H. Potter III as president of St. Cloud State University.

Potter, 60, has served as executive vice president and provost at Southern Oregon State University in Ashland since 2003. Previously, he was dean of the College of Business at Eastern Michigan University; dean of the School of Management at Lesley University; director for organizational development and employment services at Cornell University; associate dean for academics at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy; a fellow for the American Council on Education in the Office of the Chancellor at the University of Colorado; and chief negotiator for management and head of the Department of Economics and Management at the U. S. Coast Guard Academy.

Source. One booster has already told me "I hope his first act is to announce we are moving athletics to Division I." Unlikely. He leaves the NAIA-member Southern Oregon after the school has just made some major cutbacks in staff, some reduction in administration (three deans are to be combined into one new deanship) and closed a German program, where he was a finalist for the president's position but missed out last year. Pretty good move to go from a school of 5000 that had declining enrollments to a school of 15000 that doesn't have that problem yet.

Labels: SCSU

As our presidential search winds down, not surprisingly, the outgoing president of the university, Roy Saigo is conspicuous in his absence from campus. (Maybe he's down at Xcel today to help protest the UND mascot.) But he appears last night to encourage us to shake the tin cup with state legislators, via a campus e-blast:

It will be important that legislators hear from constituents about why Minnesota State Colleges and Universities are a critical state investment. Your voice can make a difference in the level of support we receive at the Capitol this year. Adequate state funding not only keeps tuition affordable, but also makes important investments in strategic areas. State appropriations are needed to cover inflation, to make critical technology infrastructure improvements to benefit students and to strengthen the state’s competitive edge in four key areas, laid out in the Minnesota budget request:

· Recruiting and retaining more students from groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education;

· Producing more graduates in science, technology, engineering and math;

· Increasing the number of nursing graduates to help avert a predicted nursing shortage;

· Supporting the growth of the state’s burgeoning bioscience industry by establishing a Biosciences Center of Excellence.

For specifics of the request, go to http://www.mnscu.edu/media/publications/pdf/2007budgetrequestbook.pdf.

I realize I sound like a broken record, but if I was a state legislator wouldn't I want to know if our children were learning? And learning what? STEM and nursing are nice, but state universities educate in other areas like business, and teaching.

And, to be blunt, the amount of inflation in the budget is a ruse to increase faculty and staff salaries, since these are the largest part of the budget. While our salaries are declining in relative terms to the rest of the country, wouldn't you think we should demonstrate something of what we've produced before we ask for a little more? When we are down to 40th percentile in pay in many programs (ours included, when you account for the lack of additional compensation for summer research, etc.), how much should I work to get more money for science education? How much faith should I have that the university system has picked the winners in the education market for our students?

UPDATE: The higher education budget passed by the Senate Higher Ed committee has $104 million for inflation, $10 million for technology, and $14 million for the underrepresented students, all put into the base (so that is money to come each future biennium as well.) The STEM and health care money were not in the bill that cleared the committee, nor was Governor Pawlenty's request for $25 million for a “performance bonus” -- i.e., no merit pay.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

My university does some silly things, but this might take the prize.

In anticipation of approval by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Board of Trustees*, and on behalf of the Board of Trustees and Chancellor James H. McCormick, you are invited to the presentation of the president-elect of St. Cloud State University.

1:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 21, 2007, Atwood Memorial Center Ballroom, St. Cloud State University. A reception will follow the presentation of the president-elect.

*The MnSCU Board approval is expected at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 21, 2007, Wells Fargo Place, St. Paul. A live satellite feed of this meeting will be available for viewing in the Miller Center Auditorium, St. Cloud State University.

You can just FEEL the excitement...

Labels: SCSU